Jacob Lawrence
Hiroshima
1983

Name: Hiroshima
Brand: Jacob Lawrence
Price: 7500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Bound volume with complete text and 8 color screenprints. One of 1500 numbered copies. Signed by John Hersey, Robert Penn Warren and Lawrence and numbered 1340 in pencil on the justification page. Printed at The Studio Heinrici Ltd., New York. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York. With the original black aniline leather binding and cloth slipcase.

Creator:

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000, American)

Creation Year:

1983

Dimensions:

Height: 12.5 in (31.75 cm)Width: 9.5 in (24.13 cm)

Medium:

Screen

Movement & Style:

Modern

Period:

1980-1989

Condition:

Catalogue reference: Nesbett L83-1.

Gallery Location:

New York, NY

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU1477211945112

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Jacob Lawrence

One of the first Black artists to receive national acclaim in the United States, Jacob Armstead Lawrence (1917–2000) was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then to Harlem, New York, in 1930. While enrolled in a community after-school arts program, Lawrence developed his talents as a painter, drawing praise and encouragement from artist Charles Alston, who ran the program at the time. Despite his family’s financial struggles during the Great Depression, Lawrence continued his pursuit of the arts, developing a series of multipanel realist paintings dedicated to iconic Black historical figures, including Toussaint L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. In 1938, he had his first solo exhibition at the Harlem YMCA and had begun to work for the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

In 1940, Lawrence received a grant from a philanthropic organization called the Rosenwald Fund, which allowed him to begin what would become his most famous work: The Migration Series, a narrative piece comprised of casein tempera paint on 60 18-by-12-inch hardboard panels featuring captions he’d written before he began to paint. (Fellow artist and future wife Gwendolyn Knight helped with the text.) Lawrence’s series focuses on the Great Migration of Black Americans from the agricultural South to the industrial North between 1910 and 1940.

By the end of the 1940s, Lawrence had earned widespread recognition for his important work and was the most celebrated Black artist in the United States. He continued covering Black historical figures throughout his career, though he also painted social commentaries on contemporary issues, like World War II and civil rights. He taught at the Art Students League in New York and at Black Mountain College in North Carolina (upon invitation from artist Josef Albers), among other institutions.

Lawrence’s works can be found in the collections of many major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and elsewhere. His painting The Builders hangs in the White House today, as it was acquired by the White House Historical Association in 2007.

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