SHAHN, BEN

born Sept. 12, 1898, Kaunas, Russia [now in Lithuania] died March 14, 1969, New York, N.Y., U.S. byname of Benjamin Shahn American painter and graphic artist who used a combination of realism and abstraction in works that support various social and political causes. Shahn emigrated with his family to New York City in 1906. In 191317 he was a lithographer's apprentice while attending high school at night. He later attended New York University, City College of New York, and the National Academy of Design in New York. Travels to Europe in 1925 and 1927 exposed him to the works of the masters. Shahn's first major work (193132) was a series of paintings of the trial of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Shahn expressed his sympathy for the defendants with great emotional power and satiric bite. That series, which brought him fame, was followed in 193233 by another on a famous trial, this one of the labour leader Tom Mooney. In 1933 Shahn enrolled in the New York City Public Works Art Project, under which he did a series of works on the Prohibition era. From 1935 to 1938 he worked for the Farm Security Administration as an artist and photographer. In 193839 Shahn and his wife, Bernarda Brysen, executed a series of panels for the lobby of the Bronx post office, New York City, a work that took the form of a geographic panorama of American life. The year 1939 was particularly fruitful for Shahn, resulting in three of his best-known pictures: Seurat's Lunch, Handball, and Vacant Lot. Shahn evolved an original and distinctive use of line in his widely reproduced graphic works. Beginning in the mid-1950s, his work became more reflective and less concerned with social criticism.