Slobe was born in
Pittsburgh to a well-to-do Jewish family, and grew up in
Chicago, enrolling in the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago at 16; by 19 she was exhibiting paintings and winning prizes. She began exhibiting sculpture as well by the late 1930s, and came eventually to be known more as a sculptor than as a painter. In 1939 and 1940 she worked for the
Works Progress Administration, creating art and teaching in a number of states, including
Oregon. She became acquainted at this point with
George Perle, whom she married in 1940; in 1942 the couple joined the
Socialist Workers Party, and she took the pseudonym "Laura Gray". She was soon tasked with assisting in the organization of automotive workers, and it was at this time that she began her cartooning career. Encouraged to submit drawings to
The Militant, her first appeared in the paper on March 4, 1944; she went on to become the paper's staff artist, submitting at least one cartoon almost weekly for the rest of her life. These drawings, which have been compared to the work of
Boardman Robinson,
Hugo Gellert, and
Robert Minor, would be published in Trotskyist publications around the world. Some of her cartoons on the subject of
civil rights would also be published in the
African-American press. Slobe and Perle moved to
New York City after
World War II, divorcing in 1952 but remaining close. She lived on and off for a time with
Duncan Ferguson, and supported herself with a number of odd jobs, devoting less and less of her time to her own art over the years. Always fragile in health – she lived with
tuberculosis from early in her life and in 1947 further suffered the removal of a lung – she contracted
pneumonia that rapidly turned fatal, killing her at the age of 49. A sculpture prize was established in her honor at the Art Institute of Chicago after her death, and Perle composed a
Quintet for Strings in her memory. A collection of her cartoons for
The Militant is owned by the
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives at
New York University. ==References==