The painter and graphic artist Ben Shahn was born in Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania) and, in 1909, came to New York City, where he received formal training in art. From the late 1920s until about 1950, he worked in a social realist tradition, attacking injustice, prejudice, and brutality. During the Great Depression, he was employed as a photographer by the Farm Security Administration to document the unemployed and the poor, government homestead projects, and rural, small-town life. After 1950, his work became more allegorical and symbolic, and he turned increasingly to producing illustrated Hebrew texts.
Shahn frequently based his paintings on his own photographs. East Side Soap Box is based on a photo of Jewish workers protesting in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The Yiddish sign reads: “Nature…
[ . . . ] Based on the above reasoning, you can see how wrong those people are who fast on the day of the birth of the new moon, as the whole reason for…
Jacques Lipchitz created The Prayer in 1943 to express his horror over the mass murder of Jews, which was then underway in Europe, reportedly crying as he made the statue. The central figure in The…