Biography of jacob lawrence

  • Jacob lawrence known for

    • Jacob Lawrence was one of the most important artists of the 20th century, widely renowned for his modernist depictions of everyday life as well as epic narratives of African American history and historical figures.

    Born in in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence moved with his family to Harlem in , where he came into contact with some of the greatest artistic and intellectual minds of his generation. In the previous decade, Harlem had experienced the remarkably creative period known as the Harlem Renaissance, and the neighborhood was still the focal point of African-American culture. Before he was twenty years old, Lawrence had developed a powerful, concise style that expressed all of the vibrancy and pathos of the neighborhood and its occupants.

    Lawrence became a nationally known figure virtually overnight when his The Migration Series was shown at New York’s Downtown Gallery in The twenty-four year old artist became the first African-American to be represented by a New York gallery. Fortune magazine published a lengthy article on the series that reproduced twenty-six of series’ sixty panels, and the entire series was purchased jointly by the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection.

    Lawrence was drafted into the Coast Guard during World War II and was assigned duty as a combat artist. Following his discharge, he returned to Harlem and resumed painting vignettes of neighborhood life. He was invited to teach at Black Mountain College in , the first of many teaching posts he would take over the years. Lawrence received a Guggenheim Foundation grant to paint the War series in and , and in Fortune Magazine commissioned him to do ten paintings examining postwar conditions in the American south. His next major series was Struggle: From the History of the American People, produced in

    During the s and 60s, Lawrence’s work was characterized by stylistic experimen

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      • Biography of jacob lawrence


    Summary of Jacob Lawrence

    Achieving success early in his career, Jacob Lawrence combined Social Realism, modern abstraction, pared down composition, and bold color to create compelling stories of African American experiences and the history of the United States. Drawing on his own life and what he witnessed in his Harlem neighborhood of New York City, Lawrence strove to communicate human struggles and aspirations that resonated with diverse viewers. Coming to artistic maturity during the waning of the Harlem Renaissance and the waxing of Abstract Expressionism, Lawrence charted a unique path, telling poignant stories of migration, war, and mental illness, among others, and would become a powerful influence for younger African American and African artists. While often drawing on the specific experiences of African Americans, Lawrence's long-running and prolific career produced an oeuvre that speaks dramatically, graphically, and movingly to viewers of all colors and persuasions.

    Accomplishments

    • Early in his career, Lawrence's artistic process relied on a vast amount of historical research. Spending hours at the public library pouring over historical texts, memoirs, and newspapers and attending history clubs that were then popular in Harlem, Lawrence translated these histories into images and linked them to contemporary political struggles both in the North and the Jim Crow segregated South, reinvigorating traditional history painting.
    • Lawrence often worked in series, creating numerous individual panels, to tell a story. Influenced by avant-garde cinema, Lawrence's series often have a montage-effect, but he used structural strategies, such as a unified color palette and recurring motifs, to connect the individual paintings into a coherent whole.
    • Lawrence borrowed strategies from print media to make his stories based in experiential reality as compelling as possible . He paired long, descriptive captions with his paintings as was common in photo magazines

    Jacob Lawrence

    American painter (–)

    Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, – June 9, ) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", an art form popularized in Europe which drew great inspiration from West African and Meso-American art. For his compositions, Lawrence found inspiration in everyday life in Harlem. He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught and spent 16 years as a professor at the University of Washington.

    Lawrence is among the best known twentieth-century African-American painters, known for his modernist illustrations of everyday life as well as narratives of African-American history and historical figures. At the age of 23 he gained national recognition with his panel The Migration Series, which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. The series was purchased jointly by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Lawrence's works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Northwest Art. His painting The Builders hangs in the White House.

    Biography

    Early years

    Jacob Lawrence was born September 7, , in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his parents had migrated from the rural south. They divorced in His mother put him and his two younger siblings into foster care in Philadelphia. When he was 13, he and his siblings moved to New York City, where he reconnected with his mother in Harlem. Lawrence was introduced to art shortly after that when their mother enrolled him in after-school classes at an arts and

    About Jacob Lawrence

    Jacob Armstead Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in The son of Southern migrants, he moved with his mother and sister to Harlem in at age

    There, during his participation in community art workshops, Lawrence quickly discovered his love of art through the encouragement of teachers such as painter Charles Alston. Throughout the s, Lawrence’s art was inspired by the cultural visionaries of the Harlem Renaissance. In , Lawrence had his first solo exhibition at the Harlem YMCA and started working for the WPA Federal Art Project. In , he received a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation to create a panel epic, The Migration of the Negro (now known as TheMigration Series); when the series was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery the following year, the then year-old artist catapulted to national acclaim.

    In the ensuing decades, Lawrence continued to create paintings drawn from the African American experience as well as historical and contemporary themes, such as war, religion, and civil rights. He taught with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in and later at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He moved to Seattle in , teaching at the University of Washington until During his later years, Lawrence worked in a variety of media, including large-scale murals, silkscreen prints, and book illustrations. Until his death in , Lawrence honed a unique visual language of abstraction that remained steeped in the human condition.

    Jake had a radical mind in a sense that he was so far ahead of his time. He could see beyond the contours of time and history.

    David C. Driskell

    And so we see ourselves in all of the things he did. But he was so reserved—he was such a gentleman that I could never see him embracing what some called the Black Power movement, in the sense &#; of a symbol that was Black-inspired only. It would have to be something that reached for the dep