Ben Shahn

1898–1969

Ben Shahn rose to prominence as a leading proponent of Social Realism, a style that responded to the social, economic, and political conditions of the Great Depression. In both paintings and photographs he portrayed the hardships of poverty and protested the era’s social injustices. The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti belongs to a series of twenty-three works that Shahn based on the controversial trial of Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who in 1921, despite weak evidence, were found guilty of killing two men during the robbery of a Massachusetts shoe factory. In 1927, after years of legal appeals, the presiding judge, Webster Thayer, sentenced the two men to death, and the decision—which many believed reflected bias against their ethnic background and anarchist beliefs—was met with worldwide protests.

First exhibited in 1932, Shahn’s Sacco and Vanzetti series launched his career. Each image represents an episode from the story in a pared-down, graphic style that conveys a sense of directness and immediacy. Here, the three members of the Lowell Committee, a group appointed to investigate the bias charges, stand over the coffins of the men whose fate they sealed by affirming the verdict’s legitimacy— the white lilies they hold seem like an empty gesture. Behind them, Judge Thayer is visible through a window, his right hand raised as if taking an oath. The allusion in the title to the Passion of Christ suggests that the work is a broader meditation on martyrdom and injustice. As Shahn remarked, “I was living through another crucifixion. Here was something to paint!”

Wikipedia entry

Introduction

Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969) was an American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.

Born Benjamin Shahn in Kaunas, modern-day Lithuania and then part of the Russian Empire, in 1898, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1906 following his father’s exile to Siberia for suspected revolutionary activity. Settling in Brooklyn, Shahn initially trained as a lithographer. After briefly studying biology at New York University, he turned fully to art, attending the National Academy of Design and traveling through Europe with his first wife. Though influenced by European modernists, Shahn ultimately rejected their stylistic approaches in favor of a realist mode aligned with his social concerns, a direction crystallized by his 1932 series The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, which responded critically to contemporary politics.

During the Great Depression, Shahn’s work with the Public Works of Art Project, the Resettlement Administration, and the Farm Security Administration further solidified his role as a social-documentary artist. Collaborating with figures such as Diego Rivera and Walker Evans, he produced photographic and mural work addressing labor conditions and American life under the New Deal. His murals for the Jersey Homesteads school, the Bronx Post Office, and the Social Security Administration exemplify themes such as immigrant hardship, labor struggles, and collective reform, often grounding his compositions in visual references to Jewish tradition and American political history.

Later in his career, he contributed to wartime propaganda through the Office of War Information, although his anti-war stance emerged in later paintings like Death on the Beach and Liberation. He produced commercial illustrations for major magazines, created stained glass, and represented the United States at the 1954 Venice Biennale. Consistently rejecting abstraction in favor of legible, symbol-laden realism, Shahn's compositions often featured expressive distortions, asymmetry, and dynamic spatial arrangements. He received honorary doctorates from Princeton University and Harvard University, and joined Harvard as a Charles Eliot Norton professor in 1956.

Wikidata identifier

Q695239

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 9, 2025.

Getty record

Country of birth

Lithuania

Roles

Artist, graphic artist, lithographer, muralist, painter, photographer

ULAN identifier

500005524

Names

Ben Shahn, Shahn, Benjamin Shahn, Benjamin Shan

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 9, 2025.

Not on view

First acquired
1938

Date of birth
September 12, 1898

API
artists/1203