how did jacob lawrence died
Mr. Lawrence continued painting until several weeks ago. Through it all, his style has remained consistent, equally balanced between striking visuals and profound content. When asked once how he kept from being swayed by artistic trends, he replied, “I have an assuredness of myself.”
Today, Mr. Lawrence’s work is represented in the collections of nearly 200 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Harlem. He has been the subject of several retrospectives, including exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974 and the Seattle Art Museum in 1986.
Following Albers’ example, Lawrence embraced the emotional and symbolic potential of color juxtapositions and conceptualized pictorial space as if an architectural plane of interlocking shapes and lines. Though he generally rejected defining his work as a particular style, when pressed, Lawrence identified his work as “expressionist,” referring to his desire to create artistic narratives which provoked strong emotional reactions in viewers. Art historian Patricia Hills has referred to Lawrence’s style as “expressive cubism” and an “expressive flat collage cubist style.”
Lawrence was, in art historian Leslie King-Hammond’s words, the “first major artist of the 20 th -century who was technically trained and artistically educated within the art community in Harlem,” and she described Lawrence as Harlem’s “biographer.” Harlem, the cultural locus of Black American life following the Harlem Renaissance, was itself an integral subject for Lawrence’s work. Though Lawrence arrived in Harlem at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance, Lawrence’s early education represented the waning influence of its ideologies, as Lawrence’s most significant teachers were Harlem Renaissance luminaries. Charles Henry Alston, Lawrence’s first mentor and his teacher at the WPA’s Harlem Art Workshop, who came to view Lawrence like his own son, was an artist who came of age embracing the teachings of Alain Locke, whose 1925 The New Negro articulated the Harlem Renaissance artistic philosophy whereby African-American artists should seek inspiration from an African, ancestral past. Lawrence also trained with and was significantly influenced by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, who instructed Lawrence both at her Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts and at the Harlem Art Workshop. Lawrence’s interest in depicting scenes from black American history and from the Harlem world around him, as well as the Egyptian-like angularity of his figures and his later visual references to African art, ultimately reflect the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance.
After dropping out of school at 16, Lawrence worked in a laundromat and a printing plant. He continued with art, attending classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, taught by the noted African-American artist Charles Alston. Alston urged him to attend the Harlem Community Art Center, led by the sculptor Augusta Savage. Savage secured Lawrence a scholarship to the American Artists School and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration, established during the Great Depression by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lawrence continued his studies as well, working with Alston and Henry Bannarn, another Harlem Renaissance artist, in the Alston-Bannarn workshop.
Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American life. As well as a painter, storyteller, and interpreter, he was an educator. Lawrence referred to his style as “dynamic cubism”, though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem. [1] He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught and spent 16 years as a professor at the University of Washington. [2]
The full text of Panel 28 from The Frederick Douglass Series reads: “A cowardly and bloody riot took place in New York in July 1863 – a mob fighting the draft, a mob willing to fight to free the Union, a mob unwilling to fight to free slaves, a mob that attacked every colored person within reach disregarding sex or age. They hanged Negroes, burned their homes, dashed out the brains of young children against the lamp posts. The colored populace took refuge in cellars and garrets. This mob was part of the rebel force, without the rebel uniform but with all its deadly hate. It was the fire of the enemy opened in the rear of the loyal army.”
The full text of Panel 22 from The Migration of the Negro series reads: “Another of the social causes of the migrants’ leaving was that at times they did not feel safe, or it was not the best thing to be found on the streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation.”
Trevor Fairbrother, modern art curator at the Seattle Art Museum, called Lawrence “certainly the most important artist in this city.”
“I thought in terms of one work and not 60 works. And to hold it together I wanted to use the same colors in the same way If I had painted one painting and completed it and gone on to the next 60 times, they would all be different,” Lawrence said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press.
References:
http://m.theartstory.org/artist/lawrence-jacob/life-and-legacy/
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lawrence
http://m.theartstory.org/artist/lawrence-jacob/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/painter-jacob-lawrence-dies/
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Klee