When Lewenthal commissioned his first lithographs in 1934, the American economy was still limping towards recovery from the Depression; high-priced art was an impossible luxury for most people and the old galleries that had always supported artists were finding it difficult to broker their work. AAA was thus "an agent of economic salvation" for numerous American artists including Peggy Bacon, Aaron Bohrod, John Steuart Curry, Luigi Lucioni, and Grant Wood, despite the fact that signing with AAA usually meant being fired from their higher-end gallery.