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Promised Land: Jacob Lawrence at the CantorPost an Event »
Read Our Review »Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University
April 1 - August 3, 2015Info
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http://museum.stanford.edu/
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650-723-4177
Jacob Lawrence. University, 1977; gouache, tempera, and graphite on paper; 32 x 24 in. Gift of Dr. Herbert J. Kayden and Family in memory of Dr. Gabrielle H. Reem, 2013, 105. © 2015 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Socie
Promised Land charts the evolution of Jacob Lawrence’s distinctive and dynamic visual style over six decades. Lawrence’s work offers a sweeping panorama of the black experience in America that includes images of the struggle against slavery, the rise of Harlem as a center of black culture, the contributions African American builders made to the transformation of America’s cities in the first half of the 20th century and meditations on the artist’s creative journey. The works from the Kayden family gifts have never before been the subject of a focused exhibition, and the Cantor Arts Center is the exclusive venue for Promised Land.
The exhibition offers the rare opportunity to examine paintings and drawings from this master draftsman renowned for chronicling the black experience in America. Highlights include the searing Civil-Rights-era canvas Ordeal of Alice (1963) and the early Harlem gouache-on-paper painting At Times It’s Hard to Get a Table in A Pool Room (1943). The installation demonstrates Lawrence’s gift for observing life and telling a story, whether he was capturing the everyday details of Harlem or reconstructing critical moments in African American history. His bold, abstract yet figurative style—a hybrid European Cubism and early 20th-century Social Realism—is also apparent in the 39 prints, which include a complete set of his first print portfolio, The Legend of John Brown (1978), and an artist’s proof edition of Eight Studies for “The Book of Genesis” (1989–1990).