In 1945, Renato Guttuso went to Paris and met Pablo Picasso, who had a pronounced influence on him. Along with other Italian artists, Guttuso was one of the founders of the Fronte Nuovo Delle Ari and soon joined the Italian Communist Party. By this time, he was already taking part in the Italian resistance movement. From then on, the artist tried to serve political interests and support realistic principles, which took deeply individual forms in his artworks and were saturated with drama and expressiveness.

The painting “Laborers” was made in 1949. It is a typical example of Guttuso’s works of that period with a distinctive social connotation. The style developed by the artist was a unique combination of expressionism and cubism, while his characters were ordinary people of southern Italy.