Ben Shahn

"Unemployed."  1934

 Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969) was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.

"Demonstrators."  1933

"French Workers."  1933

"Farmers."  1934

"Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti."

Two Italian immigrants who were anarchists were tried and executed

in 1927 for the alleged murder of two paymasters.  The case drew world-wide

attention.  Here the President of Harvard, the Governor of Mass, and even a

Supreme Court Justice on the wall approved and denied appeals.  In 1977,

Gov. Michael Dukakis proclaimed the trial had been unfair and violated their

civil rights.  They were executed because they were immigrants with different views.

Ben Shahn immigrated to the United States as a child in 1906 and was apprenticed to a lithographer after finishing elementary school. In the 1920s, he studied at New York University and City College, and very briefly at the National Academy of Design. Shahn’s first major success came with the 1932 exhibition of his series "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti." Shahn once said that he painted two things, ​“what I love and what I abhor,” and during the Depression years his scenes of children playing in concrete urban parks, and of miners and construction workers engaged in their trades, reflect his admiration for the working American and his abhorrence of injustice and oppression. 

"Liberation."

"Handball Court."

"Father and Son."

Throughout the 1930s Shahn worked for various government programs, and when the United States entered World War II, he joined the Graphic Arts Division of the Office of War Information, although only two of the many posters he designed were published. In the 1940s, Shahn turned to what he called personal realism.” His late work is often symbolic, allegorical, or religious and reflects his belief that ​“if we are to have values, a spiritual life, a culture, these things must find their imagery and their interpretation through the arts.”

"Register to Vote."

"Miners Wives" wait inside the room where the men changed out of their

filthy clothes from the mines.  Or did not come back from the mines;

there were no safety laws.  Mine owners refused to comply; deaths were common.

"Prisoners of War."

Shahn was a teacher and lecturer at many institutions, ranging from the Universities of Colorado and Wisconsin to Black Mountain College and Harvard University. Named one of the ten best American painters by Look magazine in 1948, he had many solo exhibitions during his career.

"Four Piece Orchestra."

"Willis Avenue Bridge."