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 parts 1 - 5 also.
This is part 6 of a 12-part series on the works of Ben Shahn:
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| 1964 The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones Pelican Books |
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| 1964 Vote Johnson silkscreen 71.1 x 55.9 cm |
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| 1965 Inside Kasrilevke Schocken Press |
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| 1965 Inside Kasrilevke Schocken Press |
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| 1965 Portrait of Abraham Lincoln stone lithograph 40.6 x 31.1 cm |
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| 1965 Shakespeare's Problem Plays Peregrine Books |
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| 1965 Skowhegan wood engraving 40.6 x 30.5 cm |
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| 1965 Spoleto Festival offset lithograph 96.5 x 68.6 cm |
1965 Sweet was the Song
The Odyssey Press:
1965-66 Ecclesiastes
Spiral Press, New York:
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| 1965 Ecclesiastes, or, The Preacher, Handwritten and Illuminated by Ben Shahn |
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| 1965 Maimonides "Ecclesiastes or The Preacher" |
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| 1966c Untitled (Study for Ecclesiastes) watercolour and ink on paper laid down on paper 32.4 x 25.4 cm |
1966 Haggadah for Passover
The Trianon Press 39.3 x 29.8 cm:
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| 1966 Haggadah for Passover printed on Arches Grand Vélin pure rag paper |
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| 1966 Haggadah for Passover printed on Arches Grand Vélin pure rag paper |
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| 1966 Haggadah for Passover printed on Arches Grand Vélin pure rag paper |
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| 1966 Haggadah for Passover printed on Arches Grand Vélin pure rag paper |
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| 1966 Haggadah lithograph, watercolour with gold leaf 39.4 x 60 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| 1966 Haggadah lithograph, watercolour with gold leaf 39.4 x 30 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| 1966 Haggadah lithograph, watercolour with gold leaf 39.4 x 30 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| 1966 Levana lithograph with stamping 76.2 x 56 cm National Gallery of Australia |
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| 1966 Hegel published by Doubleday Anchor Books |
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| 1966 Gut Yuntif Gut Yohr by Marie B. Jaffe |
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| 1966 Credo (study) |
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| 1966 All that is Beautiful screenprint and watercolour 64.1 x 98.4 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum |
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| 1966-67 King by David L. Lewus published by Pelican Books |
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| 1974 Black Jesus by Emery George published by Kylix Press |
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| 1966 The Biography of Painting by Ben Shahn published by Paragraphic Books, New York |
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| 1966 The Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre by Wilfrid Desan published by Doubleday Anchor Books |
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| 1967 The Bridal Canopy by S.Y. Agnon published by Schocken Press |
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| 1968 Atelier Mourlot poster lithograph 70.8 x 53.3 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1968 Ben Shahn Kennedy Galleries poster stone lithograph 89.5 x 61.6 cm |
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| 1968 Culture is... lithograph 67.3 x 50.8 cm |
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| 1968 For the Sake of a Single Verse from the Rilke Portfolio 57 x 45 cm |
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| 1968 For the Sake of a Single Verse from the Rilke Portfolio: 57 x 45 cm |
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| 1968 Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and other poems by John Berryman published by Noonday |
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| 1968 How The Birds Fly from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse colour lithograph 64.8 x 48.3 cm Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA |
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| 1968 Identity mixed media on paper 101.6 x 69.8 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| 1968 In Rooms Withdrawn and Quiet from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse colour lithograph 64.8 x 48.3 cm Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA |
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| 1968 Many Cities from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse lithograph 57.x 45 cm |
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| 1968 Many Men, from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse colour lithograph 57.2 x 45.1 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum |
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| 1968 Many Things from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse lithograph 57.2 x 45.2 cm |
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| 1968 McCarthy, Peace lithograph 96.3 x 63.5 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1968 Nights of Travel That Flew With The Stars from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse colour lithograph 64.8 x 48.3 cm Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA |
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| 1968 Of Light, White Sleeping Women in Childbed from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse lithograph 64.8 x 48.3 cm |
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| 1968 Of light, white, sleeping women in childbed from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse lithograph 57.2 x 45.1 cm |
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| 1968 One Must Know the Animals from the Rilke Portfolio: For the Sake of a Single Verse colour lithograph 64.8 x 48.3 cm |
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| 1968 Paris Review lithograph 99.1 x 65.4 cm |
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