Art Fact Friday #12 10-13-23 Jacob Lawrence
- William Mandela Matthews
- Oct 13, 2023
- 3 min read
The most widely acclaimed African American artist of this century, and One of the first nationally recognized African American painters. His works are included in standard survey books on American art, Jacob Lawrence. The first African American artist represented by a New York gallery. A social realist,he documented the African American experience in several series.
Born on September 7, 1917, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Lawrence moved with his family to Harlem in 1930. During the depression Lawrence dropped out of high school before his junior year to help support his family. He enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps and was sent to upstate New York. Also he was drafted into the Coast Guard during World War II and was assigned duty as a combat artist. Lawrence returned to Harlem and associated with the Harlem Community Art Center. There he began painting Harlem scenes.
Lawrence was assigned to an easel project with the W.P.A., becoming interested in Toussaint L’Overture. Lawrence is known for his series on the lives & scenes of African American life in history. Series include: The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, 1937, The Life of Frederick Douglass, 1938, The Life of Harriet Tubman, 1939, The Migration of the Negro,1940–41, The Life of John Brown, 1941, Harlem, 1942, War, 1946 47, The South, 1947, Hospital, 1949-50, Struggle ?History of the American People, 1953–55. Lawrence married Gwendolyn Knight, a fellow artist, in 1941.
Lawrence became a nationally figure instantly after The Migration Series opened at Ny’s Downtown Gallery in 1941. At twenty-four, he was the first African-American represented by a New York gallery. Twenty-six of series’ sixty panels were published in Fortune magazine. The Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection purchased the series.
In the 1940s Lawrence was the most celebrated African American painter in America. By the time he was thirty, he was recognized as the "foremost Negro artist.” Also rare in his generation, he was raised in black community, educated by black artists, and received inspiration from black people. Lawrence became deeply depressed in 1949 voluntarily entering Hillside Hospital, Queens, Ny. He finished his Hospital series there. In 1950, Lawrence resumed painting. He created Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1955-56, becoming his next popular series.
During the 1960s he received a retrospective exhibition and monograph from The American Federation of Arts. He traveled to Africa and lived in Nigeria. He taught at the Art Students League in Ny, and served on the faculty of Brandeis University, the New School for Social Research, California State College at Hayward and the Pratt Institute.
In 1971, Lawrence was offered a permanent position teaching art at the University of Washington, he is Professor Emeritus of Art.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in Ny held retrospective of his work traveling nationally,1974. 1983 he joined the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Seattle Art Museum exhibited a retrospective of his works in 1986. 1999, the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation was established, for the creation, presentation and study of American art, focused on African-American artists. Lawrence painted until weeks before his death June 9, 2000, age 82.
Lawrence’s work has traveled nationally throughout museums. 2001 Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence toured Phillips Collection Washington, DC, Whitney Museum of American Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art Atlanta, GA, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX, and Seattle Art Museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York exhibited Lawrence's 1954-56 Struggle Series paintings in the exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. Other modern showings One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series at The Museum of Modern Art,Ny 2015 and Between Form and Content: Perspectives on Jacob Lawrence and Black Mountain College at The Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center Asheville, NC 2018–19.
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