ATHENS, Ohio -- The exhibition "Genesis, Hiroshima and Toussaint L'Ouverture: Three Series of Prints" by Jacob Lawrence premieres at the Kennedy Museum of Art on Feb. 1. Featured in this vibrant and evocative exhibition are 31 color prints and 13 text pages from the three series, produced between 1983 and 1997, by this renowned African American artist. The exhibition will be on view through March 30.
Related public events include a reception on Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. and a panel discussion with Ohio University art, art history and African American studies faculty on March 13 at 6 p.m.
Since his first published print in 1963 Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) produced a body of prints that is both highly dramatic and intensely personal.
In his graphic work, as in his paintings, Lawrence turned to the lessons of history and to his own experience. From depictions of civil rights confrontations to scenes of daily life, these images present a vision of a common struggle toward unity and equality, a universal struggle deeply seated in the depths of the human consciousness.
Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, NJ and passed his formative years in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. In the mid-1930s he took art classes sponsored by the College Art Association and the Works Projects Administration (WPA) at the Harlem Community Art Center and following a two-year scholarship to the American Artists School worked in the easel division of the WPA Federal Art Project.
In 1941, Lawrence became the first African American artist included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, NY, where he had a one-man exhibition in 1944. He lived and worked in New York City, teaching at numerous schools until 1971, when he accepted a full-time faculty appointment at the University of Washington, Seattle, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 1983.
Kennedy Museum Curator Jennifer McLerran studied with Jacob Lawrence. "I was very fortunate to have had Jacob Lawrence as my first college art teacher," she said. "In fact, I was in the first course he taught at the University of Washington. While he produced very powerful social commentary that, at times, displays deep-seated anger and frustration with social conditions and forces, Lawrence was one of the kindest and gentlest individuals I have ever known. He served as a tireless mentor and model to a whole generation of African American artists and exerted a highly positive influence on all the young artists with whom he worked."
Lawrence received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Arts (1990), the NAACP Annual Great Black Artists Award (1988), and the Spingarn Medal (1970). His work has been the subject of numerous major retrospectives that have traveled nationally, originating at The Phillips Collection (2001-2003) the Seattle Art Museum (1986), the Whitney Museum of American Art (1974), and the Brooklyn Museum (1960).
The Kennedy Museum of Art is the premiere exhibition venue for this national museum tour organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions of Los Angeles, Calif. The exhibition is curated by Peter Nesbett, editor of "Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000)/The Catalogue Raisonne" and executive director of the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation. The works are on loan from the collection of Alitash Kebede of Los Angeles, CA. Additional funding for the Kennedy Museum venue is provided by the College of Fine Arts and Beth K. Stocker.
