Around the time of WWI, large numbers of African Americans began leaving their homes in the rural South in search of employment in the industrial cities of the North. In 1940, Lawrence chronicled their journey of hope in a flowing narrative sequence of paintings."This stirring picture book brings to[...]
For nearly five decades, "Jacob Lawrence" has been widely regarded as America's most important black artist. His work is known throughout the world for its depiction of the black American experience from the Civil War to the civil rights movement and beyond. But Lawrence's paintings are more than a [...]
Jacob Lawrence was one of the best-known African American artists of the twentieth century. In "Painting Harlem Modern", Patricia Hills renders a vivid assessment of Lawrence's long and productive career. She argues that his complex, cubist-based paintings developed out of a vital connection with a [...]
In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, completed a series of 60 small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration, the mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North that began in 1915-16. Within months of its making, the Migration Series was di[...]
Lawrence's landmark series on African American migration in context
In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, made a series of 60 small tempera paintings on the Great Migration, the decades-long mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North that began in 1915-16.[...]