Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn (1898-1969), American painter, graphic artist, and photographer, was devoted to the figurative tradition. He was one of the most significant social critics among painters of the 20th century.

Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, Ben Shahn emigrated with his family to the United States in 1906. From the age of 15 to 18, Shahn was apprenticed to a New York lithographer. In 1919 he enrolled at New York University, completing his studies at the City College of New York in 1924. After 2 years studying at the National Academy of Design, Shahn traveled in Europe and North Africa. Returning to America, he had his first one-man show in 1929.

Shahn's mature style and his emphasis on specific social themes date from the 1930s. His art was influenced by photographer Walker Evans, with whom he shared quarters. In 1931-1932 Shahn painted 23 gouaches and 2 mural panels based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. The best known is the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti; executed in tempera, with elongated bodies and slight caricature of the faces, the work is a masterpiece of understatement. This style remains consistent throughout his work. Fifteen gouache studies (1932-1933) dealing with labor leader Tom Mooney aroused the interest of Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera. Shahn became Rivera's assistant on the murals for the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, New York City.

Shahn used techniques learned from Rivera in murals and panel paintings commissioned by numerous Federal agencies. The eight paintings on the theme of prohibition for the Public Works Arts Project are good; the one titled W.C.T.U. Parade (1933-1934) is best known. His mural for the Community Center of the Federal Housing Development in Roosevelt, N.J. (1937-1938), is the most typical. Shahn's themes were a variety of topical problems—from anti—semitism to unfair labor conditions; he framed them into a continuous wall plane that is subdivided by architectural devices. Though he borrowed the organizing motifs from Rivera, Shahn's murals are generally more readable and less crowded. Less well known are his photographs for the Farm Security Administration; typical is the one titled Arkansas Share Cropper's Family.

During the 1940s Shahn executed graphics for the Office of War Information and, later, for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Register, Vote, a 1944 employment poster for the CIO, shows his concern with social equality and his ability to integrate language and visual form in a coherent design. He had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1947.

After the 1940s Shahn moved from what he called "social realism" to a "personal realism." He also increasingly turned to tempera painting and graphics. Yet his iconography was never "personal" or autobiographical. Rather, he reached a universal expression through the devices of symbolism and allegory, the stylized line, and the colorful palette, which are hallmarks of his style. Whether his subject was music or a theme after the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, he could evoke worlds with a single pen stroke or color overlay. Blind Botanist, a drawing for a painting (1954), demonstrates Shahn's ability to express the poignant, often tragic, state of mankind.

Shahn's Lucky Dragon series (1960-1962) visualizes the tragedy of the Japanese fishing vessel that sailed into an atomic testing area in 1954. Perhaps his greatest honor was his appointment as Charles Eliot Norton professor of poetry at Harvard University (1956-1957). Shahn then continued to work prolifically and with social responsibility. He taught and lectured at a variety of educational institutions.

Further Reading

Essential reading includes Shahn's Harvard lectures entitled The Shape of Content (1957). The best illustrations and general introduction to Shahn's work are in James Thrall Soby, Ben Shahn: His Graphic Art (1957) and Paintings (1963). The best critical study of Shahn is Seldon Rodman, Portrait of the Artist as an American: Ben Shahn, a Biography with Pictures (1951). □

Shahn, Ben (1898–1969). American painter, illustrator, photographer, designer, teacher, and writer, born at Kovno, Lithuania, at that time part of Russia. His family emigrated to the USA in 1906 and settled in New York. In 1913–17 he was apprenticed to a commercial lithographer and he worked in this profession until 1930. However, he also took evening classes at various colleges in New York, studying biology, 1919–21, then painting, 1921–2. In 1924–5 and 1927–9 he travelled in Europe and North Africa. Shahn's background (his father had been sent to Siberia for revolutionary activities and he grew up in a Brooklyn slum) gave him a hatred of cruelty and social injustice, which he expressed powerfully in his work. He first made a name with a series of pictures (1931–2) on the Sacco and Vanzetti case (these two Italian immigrants had been executed for murder in 1927 on very dubious evidence, and many liberals believed that they had really been condemned for their anarchist political views). The Sacco and Vanzetti paintings are in a deliberately awkward, caricature-like style that vividly expresses Shahn's anger and compassion. He did a similar series in 1932–3 on the trial of the labour leader Tom Mooney, which had taken place in 1916.

In 1933 Shahn was assistant to Diego Rivera on the latter's murals for the Rockefeller Center, New York, and he subsequently painted a number of murals himself, notably for the Bronx Post Office, New York (1938–9), and the Social Security Building, Washington (1940–1). From 1935 to 1938 he worked as an artist and photographer for the Farm Security Administration, a government agency that documented rural poverty. During the Second World War his work included designing posters for the Office of War Information. After the war he returned to easel painting and was also active as a book and magazine illustrator and as a designer of mosaics and stained glass. His later work tended to be more fanciful and reflective and less concerned with social issues. From the 1950s he gave more time to teaching and lecturing and in 1956–7 he was Charles Eliot Norton professor of poetry at Harvard University. His Norton lectures were published as The Shape of Content (1957) in which he summarized his humanistic, anti-abstract artistic philosophy. His other writings include various essays and the book Paragraphs on Art (1952).

Shahn, Ben (b Kovno [now Kaunas], Lithuania, 12 Sept. 1898; d New York, 14 Mar. 1969). American painter, illustrator, photographer, designer, teacher, and writer, born in Lithuania, then part of Russia. His family emigrated to the USA in 1906 and settled in New York. Shahn's background (his father had been sent to Siberia for revolutionary activities) and early life (he grew up in a Brooklyn slum) gave him a hatred of cruelty and social injustice, which he expressed powerfully in his work. He first made a name with a series of pictures (1931–2) on the Sacco and Vanzetti case (these two Italian immigrants had been executed for murder in 1927 on very dubious evidence, and many liberals believed that they had really been condemned for their anarchist political views). Shahn's paintings on them are in a deliberately awkward, caricature-like style that vividly expresses his anger and compassion. In 1933 he was assistant to Diego Rivera on the latter's murals for the Rockefeller Center, New York, and subsequently he painted a number of murals himself, notably for the Bronx Post Office, New York (1938–9), and the Social Security building, Washington (1940–1). From 1935 to 1938 he worked as an artist and photographer for the Farm Security Administration, a government agency that documented rural poverty. During the Second World War his work included designing posters for the Office of War Information. After the war he returned to easel painting and was also active as a book and magazine illustrator and as a designer of mosaics and stained glass. His later work tended to be more fanciful and reflective and less concerned with social issues. From the 1950s he gave more time to teaching and lecturing and in 1956–7 he was Charles Eliot Norton professor of poetry at Harvard University. His lectures there were published as The Shape of Content (1957), in which he summarized his humanistic, anti-abstract artistic philosophy.

Shahn, Ben (1898–1969). American painter, illustrator, photographer, designer, teacher, and writer, born at Kovno, Lithuania, then part of Russia. His family emigrated to the USA in 1906 and settled in New York. Shahn's background (his father had been sent to Siberia for revolutionary activities) and early life (he grew up in a Brooklyn slum) gave him a hatred of cruelty and social injustice, which he expressed powerfully in his work. He first made a name with a series of pictures (1931–2) on the Sacco and Vanzetti case (these two Italian immigrants had been executed for murder in 1927 on very dubious evidence, and many liberals believed that they had really been condemned for their anarchist political views). Shahn's paintings are in a deliberately awkward, caricature-like style that vividly expresses his anger and compassion. In 1933 he was assistant to Diego Rivera on the latter's murals for the Rockefeller Center, New York, and subsequently he painted a number of murals himself, notably for the Bronx Post Office, New York (1938–9), and the Social Security Building, Washington (1940–1). From 1935 to 1938 he worked as an artist and photographer for the Farm Security Administration, a government agency that documented rural poverty. During the Second World War his work included designing posters for the Office of War Information. After the war he returned to easel painting and was also active as a book and magazine illustrator and as a designer of mosaics and stained glass. His later work tended to be more fanciful and reflective and less concerned with social issues. From the 1950s he gave more time to teaching and lecturing and in 1956–7 he was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. His lectures there were published as The Shape of Content (1957), in which he summarized his humanistic, anti-abstract artistic philosophy.

Ben Shahn (Benjamin Shahn), 1898-1969, American painter and graphic artist, b. Lithuania. Shahn emigrated to the United States in 1906. After working in lithography until 1930, his style crystallized in a series of 23 paintings concerning the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, among them The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (Whitney Mus., New York City). Shahn dealt consistently with social and political themes. He developed a strong and brilliant sense of graphic design revealed in numerous posters. His painting Vacant Lot (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn.) exhibits a poetic realism, whereas his more abstract works are characterized by terse, incisive lines and a lyric intensity of color. The Blind Botanist (Wichita Art Mus.) is characteristic of his abstractions. Shahn's murals include a series for the Bronx Central Annex Post Office, New York City. From 1933 to 1938 he worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, producing masterful images of impoverished rural areas and their inhabitants. Shahn's later works are concerned with the loneliness of the city dweller.

Bibliography: See his writings, ed. by J. D. Morse (1972); biographies by his wife, B. B. Shahn (1972), and H. Greenfeld (1998); studies by J. T. Soby (1947 and 1957); K. W. Prescott, The Complete Graphic Works of Ben Shahn (1973).

Shahn, Ben (1898–1969),Russian‐born artist, brought to the U.S. in 1906, and reared in Brooklyn, whose life and settings he sometimes recalled in paintings. His works, showing his sense that art should be “first, and above all things, a product of the spirit,” often treat public issues with a keen sense of social justice, as in his 23 gouache paintings of the Sacco‐Vanzetti case and 15 of the Tom Mooney case. His forceful drawing, clear color contrasts, and monumental simplicity of structure are dominant in his easel paintings too. He also illustrated books, often using a straightforward calligraphy; like folk lettering. His Norton lectures at Harvard appeared as The Shape of Content (1957), and he also wrote Love and Joy About Letters (1963). Selden Rodman wrote an unusual biography, Portrait of the Artist as an American (1951).

Shahn, Ben (1898–1969) US painter, lithographer and photographer, b. Lithuania. Shahn's work reflected his concern for social and political justice, notably the Dreyfus Affair. In the 1930s he worked with Diego Rivera on murals for the Rockefeller Center, New York. He was involved with the Farm Security Administration, painting and photographing rural poverty.