EXHIBITION: September 7 - September, 2023

First Thursday opening reception: September 7th, 6-8pm

Jacob Lawrence
Prints and Works on Paper

Among the 20th century’s most important artists, Jacob Lawrence documented the African-American experience and the life of the working man. The drawing and many of the prints in this exhibition are from the artist’s Builders series, depicting daily life of blue-collar workers.

In some works, like BUILDERS NO. 14, the workers gather around a workbench fitting together wood joints and handing each other the necessary tools. The print CARPENTERS shows men spread throughout a room, drilling holes and sawing planks of wood.

Other works include FOREST CREATURES, an etching and drypoint print depicting Harriet Tubman leading fugitive slaves to safety using celestial navigation and the position of the North Star. Tubman was born a slave in Maryland, and escaped to freedom in 1849. For the next 10 years, she returned to the South nineteen times, guiding slaves to freedom in the North through the Underground Railroad.

The exhibition also has prints from Lawrence’s suite “The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture,” depicting scenes from the life of the 18th century Haitian general. Born a slave, Toussaint L’Ouverture rose to lead a slave rebellion and revolution. He coordinated the effort to draw up the first democratic constitution of Haiti. In 1802, before the Haitian Republic was firmly established, he was arrested by Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops, sent to Paris, and imprisoned. He died one year later. One year after his death, Haiti became the first Black Western republic.

BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1917, Jacob Lawrence gained national recognition at the age of 23 for his MIGRATION SERIES, a 60 panel series of paintings depicting the Great Migration of African-Americans who migrated from the rural South to the urban North between 1916 and 1970. He has had solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY, and many other international institutions. The Seattle Art Museum has hosted important exhibitions of his work, as has the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. His work has been collected by museums around the world.