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:
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| 1939 Freedom of the Press tempera on board 14 x 39.4 cm (see detail below) |
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| 1939 Freedom of the Press detail |
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| 1939 Freedom of the Press detail |
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| 1939 Handball gouache on paper mounted on board 57.8 x 79.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1939 Immigration No.2 (Design No.7) tempera on board 13.9 x 39.4 cm (see detail below) |
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| 1939 Immigration No.2 (Design No.7) detail |
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| 1939 Immigration No.2 (Design No.7) detail |
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| 1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC |
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| 1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC |
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| 1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC |
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| 1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural detail Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC |
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| 1939-40 The Meaning of Social Security mural detail Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC |
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| 1940 Contemporary American Sculpture tempera on board 54.3 x 76.2 cm |
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| 1940 Willis Avenue Bridge gouache on paper on board 58.4 x 79.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| Willis Avenue Bridge reference photograph 1934-35 Welfare Hospital, Welfare Island, New York City gelatin silver print |
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| c1940-42 Mine Boy gouache on cardboard 19.7 x 21.6 cm |
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| c1940-50 Suzanna and the Elders ink and wash on paper 57.2 x 80 cm |
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| 1941 4 1/2 Out of Every 5 Think screenprint 35.3 x 27 cm (image) MoMA, New York |
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| 1941 Immigrant Family screenprint 29.2 x 45.9 cm (image) MoMA, New York |
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| 1941 Vandenberg, Dewey, and Taft (attributed to Shahn) screenprint 38.6 x 56.3 cm (image) MoMA, New York |
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| 1942 Boy with Pineapple gouache on paper 41.5 x 33 cm Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University |
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| 1942 Prisoners of War gouache on board 37.5 x 52.7 cm |
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| 1942 The Handshake screenprint 38.2 x 57 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1942 We French Workers Warn You..Defeat Means Slavery, Starvation, Death lithograph 72.4 x 101.3 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 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 |
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| 1943 Girl Skipping Rope tempera on board 40.3 x 60.6 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1943 Morning opaque watercolour on paper mounted on hardboard 14.6 x 33.6 cm The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC |
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| 1943 Morning detail |
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| 1943 Morning detail |
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| 1943 Peter and the Wolf |
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| 1943 Portrait of myself when young gouache on board 50.8 x 70.8 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1943 This is Nazi Brutality offset lithograph 101.9 x 71.7 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1943 Welders artwork for poster "Register. Vote" gouache on board 55.9 x 100.9 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1944 Break Reaction's Grip, Register, Vote photolithograph 105.7 x 73.8 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1944 Cherubs and Children tempera on paper 39.5 x 59.2 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| 1944 Four Piece Orchestra tempera on Masonite 45.7 x 60.1 cm Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain |
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| 1944 North Africa, from the United Nations Series watercolour and gouache on paperboard 40.3 x 32 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum |
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| 1944 The Burial Society tempera on paper 24 x 34 cm Musei Vaticani, Italy |
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| 1945 Death on the Beach tempera on board 25.2 x 36 cm |
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| 1945 Liberation gouache on board 75.6 x 101.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1945 Ohio Magic tempera on paperborad mounted on hardboard 66 x 99.1 cm Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA |
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| 1945 Pacific Landscape tempera on paper over composition board 64.1 x 99.1 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1945 Reconstruction tempera on cardboard 66.2 x 99.1 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| 1946 Brothers tempera on paper mounted on fibreboard 98.5 x 65.8 cm Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC |
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| 1946 Carnival tempera on Masonite 56 x 75.5 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| 1946 Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) colour lithograph poster HUC Skirball Cultural Centre Museum Collection, Los Angeles, Library of Congress |
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| 1946 Father and Child tempera on cardboard 101.5 x 76.2 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1946 Man tempera on board 57.9 x 41.5 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1946 Mayor La Guardia gouache on paper 17 x 13.9 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1946 Renascence gouache on Whatman hot-pressed board University of Oklahoma |
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| 1946 Warning! Inflation Means Depression, Register, Vote photolithograph 104.4 x 69.5 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1946 We Want Peace, Register, Vote lithograph 104.8 x 68.6 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1946 World's Greatest Comics tempera on panel 88.9 x 121.9 cm Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| 1946c Hawthorne's Short Stories Vintage Books cover |
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| c1946 to give them a break... Register, Vote lithograph 101 x 75.6 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1947 Boy on Tricycle screenprint 37.1 x 22.7 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1947 Spring tempera on Masonite 43.1 x 76.2 cm Albright-Knox, Buffalo, New York |