Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1898. At the age of eight, he and his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Brooklyn, N.Y. At age fourteen, Shahn began an apprenticeship in his uncle’s lithography shop. From there, he studied at the Art Students League, New York University, the City College of New York, and the National Academy of Design. After traveling throughout Europe and North Africa in the 1920s, Shahn returned to the U.S. in 1929, just as the stock market crashed and the country plunged into the Great Depression. Influenced by current events, he decided to create art that addressed contemporary social issues. Most notably, in 1931–32 he produced a series of 23 gouache and tempera paintings devoted to the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants accused of robbery and murder, and sentenced (many believed unfairly) to the electric chair. Shahn painted many other socially motivated depictions of poor and working-class citizens, which earned him his reputation as a leading American Social Realist artist.