Artist

Ben Shahn

born Kovno, Lithuania 1898-died New York City 1969
Media - J0002173_1b.jpg - 89368
Ben Shahn, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0002173
Born
Kovno, Lithuania
Died
New York, New York, United States
Active in
  • Roosevelt, New Jersey, United States
Biography

Ben Shahn immigrated to the United States as a child 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 paints 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. 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."

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)

Works by this artist (34 items)

Ben Shahn, Troubled Young Man, n.d., brush and ink with wash on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Estate of the Honorable Jack Faxon, 2021.39.7
Troubled Young Man
Daten.d.
brush and ink with wash on paper
Not on view
Ben Shahn, Resources of America (two panels, mural study, Bronx, New York Central Post Office), 1939-1943, tempera on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, 1974.28.40
Resources of America (two panels, mural study, Bronx, New…
Date1939-1943
tempera on fiberboard
Not on view

Exhibitions

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Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection
February 28, 2014August 16, 2014
Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection presents some of the most treasured artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection, including works by Will Barnet, Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, Arthur Dove, Na