Jacob Lawrence: Painter of the Triumph of the Human Spirit

Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an African-American painter known for his portrayal of black life in America. In 1941, then just 23 years old, Jacob completed a series of 60 small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration, the multi-decade mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North that started around 1915. Within months of its making, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), with each institution acquiring half of the panels. Lawrence's work is now an icon in both collections, a landmark in the history of modern art, and a key example of the way that history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era.

I had the great pleasure of viewing the MoMA exhibit and was very moved by this series.  It's one thing to try to capture beautiful images in paint - quite another to be able to tell such an intimate story with tempera on brown paper, which conveys exactly the mood and emotions of its subjects and makes us truly feel the pain of the people. 

Jacob was ahead of his time and if he were alive today, would be front and center in the struggle against racism in America.  He was the witness to it all and brought such grace to his subjects, which leads us from the early 20th century all the way to the steps of the church in Charleston, South Carolina that recently suffered such tremendous senseless losses.  His paintings predict the strength and character of these brave souls and teaches us to move forward and beyond such intolerance.

One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Works
At the Whitney Museum of American Art
His Legacy
Biography
Phillips Collection

Along with Lawrence's series at MoMA, the exhibition includes other accounts of the migration from the era, including novels and poems; music by Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday; photographs by Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Gordon Parks, and Robert McNeill; and paintings by Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, and Charles White. The range of works in the exhibition sheds light on the ways in which Lawrence drew upon and transformed contemporary models for representing black experience in America.