Ben Shahn 1898–1969
Acclaimed for his stirring works of social realism and his activism against injustice and the oppression of marginalized people, Ben Shahn occupies a place of prominence in modern American Art. Born in Lithuania in 1898, Shahn immigrated to the United States in 1902 after his father was exiled to Serbia for alleged revolutionary activities. The family settled in Brooklyn, where at a young age, Shahn began apprenticing for a lithographer. Though he would later go on to study biology at New York University, he quickly turned his focus back to art, attending the Art Students League and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris.
Shahn experienced early notoriety with a series of portraits depicting two American anarchists, Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, who in 1927 were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The case sparked international outrage with many criticizing the use of circumstantial evidence and glaring ethnic prejudice. Shahn, whose commentary on political corruption and societal hardship was already central to his works, created a painting depicting the two men in shackles to be exhibited at the MoMA’s Murals by Painters and Photographers show (1932). The painting was met with controversy for its presumed communist sympathies but Shahn defended it, stating that there was no reason a painting on this subject, created with skill and sincerity, should not be exhibited.
During the Depression years, Shahn worked for the New York City Public Works Art Project and the WPA before ultimately joining the Farm Security Administration (formerly the Resettlement Administration) at the behest of his friend, Walker Evans. Having now turned to the medium of photography, Shahn’s FSA work initially consisted of New York City street scenes but soon transitioned to images of rural poverty in the southern United States. His photographs of the tenancy union suppression in Arkansas and the plight of the country’s sharecroppers were used as propaganda for the government relief programs benefiting those hardest hit by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Reflecting on his work, Shahn explained, “Our function was… to convince our congressmen and senators that this is a necessary thing… and without convincing the public, you can’t convince a congressman either.” He continued his activism as the country entered World War II in 1941, joining the Graphic Arts Division of the Office of War Information where he created anti-Nazi posters depicting the atrocities that were being committed in Europe.
After the war, Shahn took teaching positions at numerous institutions including the University of Wisconsin, University of Colorado, Harvard, and Black Mountain College. He continued in his artistic career, showing extensively in group and solo exhibitions at museums in New York, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome, and Vienna as well as representing the United States at the 1954 Venice Biennale. A retrospective of his work was held in 1947 at the Museum of Modern Art and in 1948, Look magazine named him as one of the ten best American painters.
