Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 and grew up in Harlem, New York. While Harlem at that time was an exciting place energized by its famed Renaissance, Jacob’s neighborhood had some mean streets and his mother worried about her children getting into trouble after school while she was still at work. She sent them to a program run by the artist Charles Alston, who quickly noted Lawrence’s talent and interest in bright, primary colors and bold shapes.
Lawrence continued to take classes in Harlem and was later involved with the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, which allowed him to interact with others in a diverse creative community. He befriended painter Romare Bearden and poet Claude McKay, and soon after married a young woman named Gwendolyn Knight, also an artist from the Harlem neighborhood.
Lawrence was inspired by local scenes and characters and his first exhibit was held at the Harlem YMCA in 1938. He would always feel strong ties to the area even when he was no longer living there, and credited the educational and cultural programs made available to him as a boy as having had a tremendous influence on his career.
The Migration of The Negro
Lawrence’s fondness for narrative painting led him to begin his epic Migration of The Negro series, a composition of sixty panel paintings that traces the history and paths of African-Americans moving from Southern states to the urban North to find employment and opportunity. He also produced another series of portraits of notable African-Americans such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, and the white abolitionist John Brown.
The Migration of The Negro was exhibited by the influential Manhattan Downtown Gallery in 1941. Lawrence’s inclusion in this show represented a major breakthrough for African-American artists and his paintings were highly praised. The Migration series was purchased by The Museum of Modern Art and The Phillips Collection and received considerable publicity. Lawrence then served in the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy and completed a series of paintings about World War II, which again received widely favorable attention.
Struggle and Protest
Despite – or perhaps due to the pressures of – his artistic success, Lawrence began to feel overwhelmed and admitted himself to a New York hospital in 1949. He was there for several months and was again inspired by his environment to paint a series of panels entitled Hospital. This was followed by a more universal view of American history entitled Struggle: From the History of the American People, another panel series including scenes of both white and black Americans from colonial times to pioneer days, indicating that Jacob Lawrence was moving from the realm of an artist closely identified with one race to being a chronicler of the full American experience.
Although he participated in depicting the 1960s civil rights conflict, Lawrence did not wish to be exclusively considered a black or protest artist. However, he realized that the expression of such artists was integral and in a later interview noted, "I work out of my experience, and if somebody wants to call that black art, that's all right."
Legacy
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Guggenheim and Ford Foundation grants and The National Medal of Arts, Lawrence also taught in several universities and schools. He died in June of 2000 at the age of 82, and his work and commissioned pieces can be seen throughout the United States in various museums and public forums. Furthermore, Lawrence’s 1947 painting The Builders presently hangs in The Green Room of The White House.
Sources
 |
