League of Socialist Artists

Born in Coventry in 1940, Maureen Scott trained at Plymouth College of Art in the 1960s and then settled in London, studying at Goldsmiths College and St Martin's School of Art. For many women artists in the early 1970s artistic practice and political activism were intrinsically linked and were often centred around Marxist Feminist perspectives. Scott's art was and remains deeply embedded with her socialist politics and liberation struggles and - while many Marxist feminists of the early movement focused on domestic labour struggles -Scott was looking at the broader international context, understanding the importance of an inter-sectional, global struggle for liberation - just as groups like the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD) would advocate later in the decade.In 1971 Scott was a founding member of the League of Socialist Artists (LSA) and the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain (MLOB). In addition to co-founding both organisations she was provisional secretary of the LSA and is de facto archivist of LSA. It is her name that is cited as the contact for the LSA on their materials, her lectures that fill a number of pamphlets and her illustrations in publications such as Pablo Neruda's To the Women of the Whole World which was first printed by the LSA in 1974.In 1971 the LSA took over 18 Camberwell Church Street which they ran as the Communard Gallery until 1975. At the gallery they distributed 'paintings, prints, posters and propaganda for the working class movement' and held exhibitions such as Art and Revolutionary Consciousness: Paintings By Maureen Scott.

• Introduction | Linsey YoungManifesto and Theses on ArtClass War in the Arts!Essays on Art and ImperialismPaula Modersohn-BeckerLiberal Populism or Revolutionary Proletarian Realism in ArtSocialist Artists Print Edition Number OneMaureen Scott: Photographs