Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn
Common Man, Mythic Vision : The Paintings of Ben Shahn focuses on the paintings of Ben Shahn (1898-1969) created between 1936 and 1965, and emphasizing the period of World War II and its aftermath. Shahn’s public recognition and personal style coalesced in 1932 with the exhibition of his renowned series on the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian immigrant anarchists. Shahn’s social views were his legacy from the Jewish radical tradition in Eastern Europe, which evolved, through personal experience, into a profound lifelong commitment to fight against injustice.
Shahn had emigrated to America from Lithuania as a child in 1906 and settled with his mother, brother, and sister in Brooklyn, where they were joined by his father. He gradually acculturated, moving away from the religious observance of his family and establishing a secular Jewish identity aligned with the causes of labor and social reform during the 1930s. As Shahn grew disappointed with political ideologies, and in response to the trauma of World War II, he moved from Social Realism–the American art style of the 1930s dedicated to social and political reform for which he was acclaimed–toward a more subjective mode of painting. Increasingly, he turned to the symbolic rendering of biblical and mythological themes, as well as allegorical works that universalized topical events and personal experiences.
As with other artists of the 1940s and 1950s, the changes in Shahn’s style reflected the development of a new pictorial language and imagery to address the traumatic impact of World War II, the Holocaust, the nuclear age, and the Cold War. Unlike other artists, however, who began to make abstract pictures, Shahn’s art remained stylistically “realist” and based on narrative.
Ben Shahn’s life and career mark his dedication to humanitarian causes and belief in the regenerative powers of art.
Major support was received from the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional funding was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The catalogue was published with the aid of a publications fund established by the Dorot Foundation.
Artwork by Ben Shahn, New York, 1947. Photo credit: Art © Estate of Ben Shahn/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
