Jacob lawrence harlem renaissance artwork

Growing up in Harlem during the s, Lawrence was exposed to leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance, who inspired him to delve into the history of his community. With this format, Lawrence sought to instill his narratives with pictorial grandeur and to address complex histories he felt could not be effectively portrayed in a single image. In , with funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, Lawrence began work on the War Series , the first of his multipart works to document both a personal and historical experience—his service in World War II, during which he was stationed on the first racially integrated naval ship in United States history.

Lawrence rendered these scenes using his characteristic flattened planes and silhouetted figures, eschewing modeling and perspective in favor of bold, semiabstracted forms. Victory , the last work in the series, contains none of the exuberance one might expect from its title. Dana Miller and Adam D. Jacob Armstead Lawrence September 7, — June 9, was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life.

Jacob lawrence paintings migration

Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", an art form popularized in Europe which drew great inspiration from West African and Meso-American art. For his compositions, Lawrence found inspiration in everyday life in Harlem. 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. Lawrence is among the best known twentieth-century African-American painters, known for his modernist illustrations of everyday life as well as narratives of African-American history and historical figures. At the age of 23 he gained national recognition with his panel The Migration Series , which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.

The series was purchased jointly by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D. His painting The Builders hangs in the White House. View the full Wikipedia entry.