Kalish is best known for his portrayals in bronze of the American laborer. His romantic representations of Depression era workers is consistent with his theory that 'only by interpreting our own time, the Industrial Age, can we ever hope to produce a real epoch in art . . . In action, an American worker is naturally graceful and makes a subject that even the Greeks might have envied . . .' (G.A. Reynolds, American Bronze Sculpture, The Newark Museum, Newark, N.J., 1984, p. 52).