ART & ARTISTS: Ben Shahn

Friday, 12 March 2021

Ben Shahn - part 2

Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist and member of the Social Realist movement. His expressive figurative paintings, murals, and posters were inexorably tied to his pursuit of social justice and lifelong activism within leftist political beliefs. Shahn unflinchingly critiqued the government and society, as seen in his The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931–1932), a painting which condemned the controversial conviction of two Italian-American immigrants who were sentenced to death in 1927. “The artist must operate on the assumption that the public consists in the highest order of individual—that he is civilised, cultured, and highly sensitive both to emotional and intellectual contexts,” he once stated. “And while the whole public most certainly does not consist in that sort of individual, still the tendency of art is to create such a public—to lift the level of perceptivity, to increase and enrich the average individual's store of values.”

Born in 1898 in Kaunas, Lithuania into an Orthodox Jewish family, he and his family emigrated to New York in 1906. Shahn went on to study at the National Academy of Design in New York and travelled throughout Europe during the 1920s. Upon his return to the United States, he assisted Diego Rivera in 1933 for the painting of his Man at the Crossroads fresco in Rockefeller Center. During the latter part of his career, the artist’s paintings became more symbolic of his own emotional state rather than a description of social injustices.

Sharing a studio in 1929 with the photographer Walker Evans stimulated Shahn's own interest in photography; he began photographing people and street scenes, first in New York and later around the country. These photographs served as the basis for many of his prints and paintings. A series on his photographs will feature in the back end of these posts on Shahn.

He died in March 1969 in New York City. Today, Shahn’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.

For earlier works by Ben Shahn, see part 1 also.

This is part 2 of a 12-part series on the works of Ben Shahn:

1939 Freedom of the Press
tempera on board 14 x 39.4 cm
(see detail below)

1939 Freedom of the Press detail

1939 Handball
gouache on paper mounted on board 57.8 x 79.4 cm
MoMA, New York

1939 Immigration No.2 (Design No.7)
tempera on board 13.9 x 39.4 cm
(see detail below)

1939 Immigration No.2 (Design No.7) detail

1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural
Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC

1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC

1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural
Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC

1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural detail
Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC

1940 Contemporary American Sculpture
tempera on board 54.3 x 76.2 cm

1940 Willis Avenue Bridge
gouache on paper on board 58.4 x 79.4 cm
MoMA, New York

Willis Avenue Bridge reference photograph
1934-35 Welfare Hospital, Welfare Island, New York City
gelatin silver print

c1940-42 Mine Boy
gouache on cardboard 19.7 x 21.6 cm

c1940-50 Suzanna and the Elders
ink and wash on paper 57.2 x 80 cm

1941 4 1/2 Out of Every 5 Think
screenprint 35.3 x 27 cm (image)
MoMA, New York

1941 Immigrant Family
screenprint 29.2 x 45.9 cm (image)
MoMA, New York

1941 Vandenberg, Dewey, and Taft (attributed to Shahn)
screenprint 38.6 x 56.3 cm (image)
MoMA, New York

1942 Boy with Pineapple
gouache on paper 41.5 x 33 cm
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University

1942 Prisoners of War
gouache on board 37.5 x 52.7 cm

1942 The Handshake
screenprint 38.2 x 57 cm
MoMA, New York

1942 We French Workers Warn You..Defeat Means Slavery, Starvation, Death
lithograph 72.4 x 101.3 cm
MoMA, New York

1942 We French Workers Warn You..Defeat Means Slavery, Starvation, Death
tempera on cardboard 101.6 x 144.8 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

1943 Girl Skipping Rope
tempera on board 40.3 x 60.6 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1943 Morning
opaque watercolour on paper mounted on hardboard
14.6 x 33.6 cm
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

1943 Morning detail

1943 Peter and the Wolf

1943 Portrait of myself when young
gouache on board 50.8 x 70.8 cm
MoMA, New York

1943 This is Nazi Brutality
offset lithograph 101.9 x 71.7 cm
MoMA, New York

1943 Welders artwork for poster
"Register. Vote"
gouache on board 55.9 x 100.9 cm
MoMA, New York

1944 Break Reaction's Grip, Register, Vote
photolithograph 105.7 x 73.8 cm
MoMA, New York

1944 Cherubs and Children
tempera on paper 39.5 x 59.2 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

1944 Four Piece Orchestra
tempera on Masonite 45.7 x 60.1 cm
Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain

1944 North Africa, from the United Nations Series
watercolour and gouache on paperboard 40.3 x 32 cm
Smithsonian American Art Museum

1944 The Burial Society
tempera on paper 24 x 34 cm
Musei Vaticani, Italy

1945 Death on the Beach
tempera on board 25.2 x 36 cm

1945 Liberation
gouache on board 75.6 x 101.4 cm
MoMA, New York

1945 Ohio Magic
tempera on paperborad mounted on hardboard 66 x 99.1 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA

1945 Pacific Landscape
tempera on paper over composition board 64.1 x 99.1 cm
MoMA, New York

1945 Reconstruction
tempera on cardboard 66.2 x 99.1 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

1946 Brothers
tempera on paper mounted on fibreboard 98.5 x 65.8 cm
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,
Washington, DC

1946 Carnival
tempera on Masonite 56 x 75.5 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

1946 Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO)
colour lithograph poster
HUC Skirball Cultural Centre Museum Collection, Los Angeles, Library of Congress