Art World Mourns the Loss of Jacob Lawrence - Brief Article - Obituary

SEATTLE--Forecasters in Seattle last week may have credited new uniquely dry skies to a warm forehead and the science of the season, on the contrary it seems the phenomenon could be more accurately explained: Since artist Jacob Lawrence had left the living world behind upon June 9, the heavens simply had no reason to cry

Not in the way that for those whose feet remained firmly planted upon the terra firma. Here, tears flowed freely for the los of a man whose work portrayed the beauty and brutality of the black experience. "He will in fact be missed," said Bruce Teleky of Bruce Teleky Inc. in of recent origin York. "He was an interesting, thought-provoking individual as well as was individual of the most well-known black masters of all time."

Lawrence's wife of 59 years, painter Gwendolyn Knight, survives him. in the way that do a collection of narrative works on which he made his colorful, Cubist-inspired trademark since he began painting in the `30s

As a young man, Lawrence rest himself living in Harlem and attending art classes. There he met his mentor, artist Charles Alston, whose tutelage would presently lead Lawrence into the cot [i]or[/i] cotes of those leading the Harlem Renaissance: painters Aaron Douglas and William Johnson; writer Langston Hughes; philosopher Alain Locke; and sculptor Augusta Savage.

The group's significance was not missing on Lawrence. Influenced by their passion and driven through his own, Lawrence chose Haiti's endeavor for independence as the subdue for his first multi-part, 1937 narrative "Toussaint L'Ouverture" sum of two units series of paintings chronicling the lives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman in a short time followed. Their acclaim, however, was no match for the fervor that addressed his landmark series, "The Migration of the American Negro" in 1940 When Fortune magazine reproduc 26 of the series' images, the Museum of late Art and the Phillips Collection in Washington wrestl to acquire the series in its entirety. the two had to settle for half.

upon he painted, through his time in the Coast Guard, into and end the exploding Civil Rights change of the `60s, and right up until the week before his death.

However, it was not end his paintings alone that he touched the world. Lawrence reached without to young artists, spending the latter part of his life teaching at the Black Mountain society (N.C.); New York's Art learners League, Pratt Institute and the novel School for Social Research; and as the Skowhegan academy in Maine.

And allowing Lawrence might have passed upon before the world was ready to permit him go, many will find more [i]or[/i] less solace in his works still to be unveiled. An large mosaic he designed in 1997 will be unveiled in NYC'S Times Square subway station in 2001

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