Item Overview
Description: Ben Shahn (1898 - 1969)
Ben Shahn was active/lived in New York. Ben Shahn is known for social-realist painting, illustration, lithography, photography.
Dimensions: Painting size: 16 x 20 inches, Frame size: 21 x 25 inches.
Medium: Oil / Artist board, signed lower right.
Condition Report: Great overall condition.
Provenance:
Private collection, upstate NY.
Biography from The Artisfun Gallery
A painter, teacher, graphic artist, and photographer, Ben Shahn was devoted to the figurative tradition and was one of the more significant social critics among painters of the 20th century.
He was born in Kaunus, Lithuania on September 12, 1898, and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1906. From the ages of 15 to 18, Shahn was apprenticed to a New York lithographer. In 1919, he enrolled at New York University, completing his studies at the City College of New York in 1924. After 2 years studying at the National Academy of Design, Shahn traveled in Europe and North Africa. Returning to America, he had his first one-man show in 1929.
Shahn's mature style and his emphasis on specific social themes date from the 1930s. His art was influenced by photographer Walker Evans, with whom he shared quarters. In 1931-1932, Shahn painted 23 gouaches and 2 mural panels based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. The best known is the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, executed in tempera, with elongated bodies and slight caricature of the faces, the work is a masterpiece of understatement. This style remains consistent throughout his work. Fifteen gouache studies (1932-1933) dealing with labor leader Tom Mooney aroused the interest of Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera, and Shahn became Rivera's assistant on the murals for the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, New York City.
In the eight paintings on the theme of prohibition for the Public Works Arts Project, Shahn used techniques learned from Rivera in murals and panel paintings commissioned by numerous Federal agencies. The one titled W.C.T.U. Parade
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Good Condition