artist lithographer Photographer
Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, to Jewish parents Joshua Hessel and Gittel (Lieberman) Shahn. His father was exiled to Siberia for possible revolutionary activities in 1902, at which point Shahn, his mother, and two younger siblings moved to Vilkomir (Ukmergė).
In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel, who had fled Siberia. They settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, where two more siblings were born. His younger brother drowned at age 17. Shahn began his path to becoming an artist in New York, where he was first trained as a lithographer. Shahn's early experiences with lithography and graphic design is apparent in his later prints and paintings which often include the combination of text and image. Shahn's primary medium was egg tempera, popular among social realists.
Although Shahn attended New York University as a biology student in 1919, he went on to pursue art at City College in 1921 and then at the National Academy of Design. After his marriage to Tillie Goldstein in 1924, the two traveled through North Africa and then to Europe, where he made "the traditional artist pilgrimage." There he studied great European artists such as Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. Contemporaries who would make a profound impact on Shahn's work and career include artists Walker Evans, Diego Rivera and Jean Charlot.
In1933 Shahn worked as an assistant of Diego Rivera; at this time, Rivera was working on the mural at the Rockefeller Center in New York.
In 1935, Walker Evans recommended Shahn to Roy Stryker and Shahn joined the Farm Security Administration photographic group. He did one of the his most famous works, the fresco muralfor, for the Jersey Homesteads' community center.
In 1939, Shahn and his wife Bernarda Bryson produced a set of 13 murals inspired by Walt Whitman's poem I See America Working and installed at the United States Post Office-Bronx Central Annex.
During the war years of 1942-43, Shahn worked for the Office of War Information (OWI), but his pieces lacked the preferred patriotism of the day and only two of his posters were published.
In 1945 he painted Liberation about the Liberation of Paris which depicts children playing in the rubble. He also did a series, called Lucky Dragon, about the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (literally, Lucky Dragon No. 5), the Japanese fishing boat caught in the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb blast.
From 1961 to 1967, Shahn worked on the stained glass at Temple Beth Zion, a Buffalo, NY synagogue designed by Harrison and Abramovitz. At this time Shahn also began to act as a commercial artist for CBS, Time, Fortune and Harper's.
By the mid-1950s, Shahn's accomplishments had reached such a height that he was sent, along with Willem de Kooning, to represent the United States at the 1954 Venice Biennale. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Academia dell' Arte e del Disegno in Florence.
In 1956 he received honorary doctorates from Princeton University and Harvard University, and joined Harvard as a Charles Eliot Norton.
His work reflects his concern with justice, political freedom and the state of humanity.
He said that he preferred tempera because it was a medium that imposed clarity and control. His technique was fluid enough to encompass the austere, sorrowful gravity of his social commentary and his more humorous work. There is a strong decorative element in his work. His colors are bright, even brash, laid on with a sure, free hand in his graphics. At times, he added gold leaf to his pictures.
His work is realistic, but verges on the abstract, and he makes good use of a few favored symbols. A gallery of his painting is on display at the Vatican Museum.
He had exhibited at institutions including Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery in New York, New York, in 1930, and New Jersey State Museum, in Trenton, in 1969. His published writings, including The Biography of Painting (1956) and The Shape of Content (1960), became influential works in the art world. The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame recognizes him as "one of the greatest masters of the twentieth century. Honors, books, and gallery retrospectives continue to rekindle interest in his work...years after his death."
not detected
Three Creole Girls
The Red Stairway
not detected
not detected
French Workers
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices
Three men
Coal company town in Jenkins
Street musicians in Maynardville
Amusement Park
not detected
not detected
not detected
not detected
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices
Years of Dust', US government poster
Italian Landscape
The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti
Miner's Wives
not detected
Erinys
not detected
not detected
Fourth of July: Orator
not detected
not detected
Liberation
Blind Botanist
not detected
Spring
Death Of A Miner
not detected
Children lined up at enterance to Casino Cinema
Age of Anxiety
Maimonides
Cherubs and Children
not detected
Father and Son
How do I love thee
not detected
Man reading newspaper in Jackson Square
not detected
Loading recently mined coal in Jenkins
not detected
not detected
Scene in Jackson Square
Four Piece Orchestra
Étude pour la peinture murale du Jersey Homestead
Poster in protest of the exection of Sacco and Vanzetti
Three Lutes
not detected
Composition for Clarinets and Tin Horn
Portrait of myself as a young boy
Bookshop: Hebrew Books, Holy Day Books
not detected
New York
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices
not detected
November 22 1963
not detected
not detected
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices
not detected
not detected
Helix and Crystal
Sacco and Vanzetti
Italian Landscape II: Europa
Demonstration in Paris
Poster for Congress of Industrial Rights
not detected
Second Allegory
not detected
Signs
not detected
Sign on a restaurant We Cater to White Trade only
American Life #14
Those unknown
Seward Park
not detected
not detected
Trapper's house
Self-Portrait Among Church Goers
not detected
not detected
Age of anxiety
not detected
Fiddlin Bill Henseley, Mountain Fiddler
Florestine Carson, unemployed Creole Negro trapper, and daughter
not detected
not detected
East Side Soap Box
Identity
Martin Luther King
Advertisements from Natchez, Mississippi of a popular malaria cure
Allegory
The Four Prosecutors - Sacco-Vanzetti Case
not detected
Portrait of Dag Hammarskjold
Renascence
not detected
Quotations: He said, “I hate injustice. I guess that’s about the only thing that I really do hate... and I hope I will go on hating it all my life.”
Shahn mixed different genres of art. His body of art is distinctive for its lack of traditional landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Shahn used both expressive and precise visual languages, which he coalesced through the consistency of his authoritative line. His background in lithography contributed to his detail-oriented look Shahn is also noted for his use of unique symbolism, which is often compared to the imagery in Paul Klee's drawings. While Shahn's "love for exactitude" is apparent in his graphics, so too is his creativity. In fact, many of his paintings are inventive adaptations of his photography.
Evocative juxtapositions characterize his aesthetic. He intentionally paired contrasting scales, colors, and images together to create tension. One signature example is seen in his play between industrial coolness and sympathetic portrayals. Handball demonstrates his "use of architectural settings as both psychological foil to human figures and as expressive abstract pattern."
His art is striking but also introspective. He often captured figures engrossed in their own worlds. Many of his photographs were taken spontaneously, without the subject's notice. Although he used many mediums, his pieces are consistently thoughtful and playful.
He married Tillie Goldstein in 1924.
Walker Evans were a friend, former roommate and collegue of Ben Shahn
