Biography from AskART:
| Born in Kovno, Lithuania to an orthodox Jewish family, Ben Shahn became
one of America's leading Social-Realist painters, addressing causes related to social injustices.
Shahn's methods included flat, muted coloration, and mod figures with
varied and usually tense facial expressions, set against a background
of buildings and empty spaces. Often relief from extreme tension
was provided by a touch of whimsy such as an out-of-character piece of
clothing, etc.
In 1906, Shahn
settled with
his family in Brooklyn, New York, where his family had joined his
woodcarver father, a man whose aggressive socialist views had led to
imprisonment in Siberia and then escape. In 1913, at age
fifteen, Shahn began an apprenticeship with a
lithographer, which led to his becoming a Master Lithographer.
Earning money as a lithographer allowed him to pursue additional
education which included the Educational Alliance Art School, National
Academy of Design, New York University and the Art Students
League.
He traveled to Europe in 1925, and was in Paris for four years,
enrolling in the Sorbonne and the Academie de la Grande
Chaumiere. Observing the modernists prevalent modernism in Paris,
Shahn was not interested in adopting abstraction because he felt it was
detached from important societal issues. "For him abstractionism
seemed to be an empty gesture signaling both contempt for all society
and the artist's withdrawal from communication." (Zellman 878).
In this assessment, Shahn shared the philosophy of some of his
contemporaries in New York such as John Sloan and Robert Henri,
founders of Social Realism.
Returning to the United States in 1929, Shahn spoke out strongly
against abstract art and became a natural ally with Henri and the
'Ashcan' school that focused on the poor quality of life of lower-class
people and their economic disparity from the wealthy
classes.
He
shared a studio with photographer Walker Evans, and in 1930 at the
Downtown Gallery, had his first one-man exhibition. In 1931
and 1932, he did a series about the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti, two
men who within a minute's time shot and killed a paymaster and guard in
Browntree, Massachusetts and escaped in a getaway car with
$16,000. It became "the most politically charged murder case in
the history of American jurisprudence" because the perpetrators, who
confessed, were Italian immigrants. They had defendants for
leniency from the death sentence including Shahn who asserted
that they were treated super harshly because of their immigrant status
and the fact they were poor and politically radical. (Court TV)
Shahn also traveled to
Europe and North Africa and became increasingly committed to social
justice themes that ranged from interest in social ills at large to the
plight of individuals.
During
the Depression years in New York City, he was a mural assistant to
Diego Rivera at Rockefeller
Center. He also painted murals for the WPA, worked as a
photographer for the Farm Security Administration, and designed World
War II posters for the government. In addition, he painted murals
for a school building and community center in an area that is now
Roosevelt, New Jersey. In the 1940s, he worked in Washington DC
as a muralist for the Social Security Building, now the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, and as a graphic artist was a liason
official for the Office of War Information.
After World War II, Ben Shahn
renewed his interest in his Jewish heritage, and developed a style
influenced by Surrealism with Hebraic subjects. He also did magazine illustrations
including for Time and Seventeen, and executed
many stained-glass windows. In 1956, he was Charles Eliot Norton
Professor at Harvard University.
In 1998, the
Jewish Museum in New York City organized a traveling exhibition of his
works that he created between 1936 and 1965. These works with
allegorical, mythological and Biblical themes were more personal than
his earlier pieces of Social Realism, and were his reaction to the
birth of the state of Israel and nuclear proliferation.
Sources:
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/not_guilty/sacco/9.html---website of Court TV's Crime Library
Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC
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