The work of Jacob Lawrence brings African American history to the walls of museums and galleries when many American schools neglect to bring it into the classroom. Early in life, he became a student of African American history and depicted its...
[more]The work of Jacob Lawrence brings African American history to the walls of museums and galleries when many American schools neglect to bring it into the classroom. Early in life, he became a student of African American history and depicted its richness in his colorful narratives: the "Toussaint L'Ouverture" series (1937), the "Harriet Tubman" series (1938-1939), the "Frederick Douglass" series (1939-1940), the "Migration" series (1941), and the "John Brown" series (1941-1942). While his paintings astound viewers with their beauty and simplicity, the Social Realist artworks also address class and race issues, both in their content and in the very fact of their celebrated existences.
Lawrence describes the intention behind his historical paintings: "I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools...I don't see how a history of the United States can be written without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing...I am not a politician, I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about."
Lawrence is one of the few African Americans who was taught and influenced primarily by other African Americans. He moved to New York City in 1924, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. He attended the Harlem Art Workshop and the American Artists School, where he developed his style of simple geometric figures. At the age of 21 he gained notoriety with the "Toussaint L'Ouverture" series and at 24, he became the first African American artist to have work in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Now his artwork is in every major public collection of twentieth-century American art.
Lawrence created other series chronicling World War II, the South, the rise of supermarkets, Genesis, Hiroshima, and his stay in the Hillside Hospital for treatment of depression. All of the panels in these series feature bright colors, elements of Cubism and Expressionism, and captions written by the artist. His 1000-plus images also include non-series paintings and drawings depicting daily life in communities he has visited or lived in. Lawrence has completed many public commissions and is currently at work on a 72-foot-long mural which will be unveiled in Times Square in 2001.
Celebrations of Lawrence's career include a 1974 Whitney retrospective, a 1986 Seattle Art Museum retrospective, an election to the Academy of Arts and Letters, and numerous honorary doctorates. Lawrence's career as an educator is as important as his career as an artist. He taught at Black Mountain College in 1947, at the Pratt Institute from 1958 to 1965, and served as professor emeritus at Washington University from 1970 to 1983.
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