Contemporary Art

JACOB LAWRENCE
(American, 1917-2000)

The Builders, 1974
Screenprint
Gift of Polly Jones 2000.9.2
© 2004 Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jacob Lawrence was one of the foremost African-American artists of the twentieth-century. Growing up in Harlem during the Depression, he developed a social awareness that he later incorporated into his artworks. His paintings and prints celebrated the lives and struggles of African Americans in subjects ranging from heroic themes taken from black history to the noble dignity of working people. He developed a distinctive narrative painting style based on simplified forms derived from Cubism and Expressionism.

From the 1960s onward, Lawrence devoted much of his time to printmaking. The rich colors and broad, flat forms achieved by the screenprinting technique appealed greatly to his aesthetic sense. Lawrence originally designed the composition of The Builders as a poster for a retrospective exhibition of his artwork at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974. It was later published as an edition of prints.