Lawrence, Jacob, 1917–2000, American painter, b. Atlantic City, N.J. In Lawrence's work social themes, often detailing the African-American experience, are expressed in colorfully angular, simplified, expressive, and richly decorative figurative effects. He executed many cycles of paintings, often narrative, including Harriet Tubman (1939–40), Migration (completed 1941, Museum of Modern Art and Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), Coast Guard (1943–45), and Builders series, on which he worked for parts of the last 50 years of his life. His War series and Tombstones are in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Also known for the vivid prints he began producing in 1963 and his monumental mosaic mural (designed 1997, installed 2001) for the New York subway system, Lawrence taught at Black Mountain College, the Univ. of Washington School of Art, several other colleges, and a number of major New York City art schools. In 1941 he married

Gwendolyn Knight, 1913–2005, an American painter and sculptor, b. Bridgetown, Barbados.

Bibliography

See P. T. Nesbett and M. DuBois, The Complete Jacob Lawrence (2000); P. T. Nesbett, Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963–2000) (2001); biography by E. H. Wheat (1986, repr. 1990).

Lawrence, Jacob

(born Sept. 7, 1917, Atlantic City, N.J., U.S.—died June 9, 2000, Seattle, Wash.) U.S. painter. He moved with his family at 13 to New York City's Harlem. Art classes sponsored by the Works Progress Administration in 1932 developed his talent. His works portray scenes of African American life and history with vivid, stylized realism. Gouache and tempera were Lawrence's characteristic media. His use of sombre browns and black for shadows and outlines in an otherwise vibrant palette lent his work a distinctive overtone. His best-known works are his series on historical and social themes, such as Life in Harlem (1942) and War (1947). His later works include a powerful series on the struggles of desegregation. From 1971 he taught at the University of Washington.

Lawrence, Jacob (Armstead) (1917– ) painter; born in Atlantic City, N.J. He studied under Charles Alston at the Art Workshop, Harlem, N.Y. (1932–39), and at the Harlem Art Center and the American Artists School, New York (1937–39). Considered a leading black artist, he worked in gouache, an opaque water color, and tempera, a mixture of pigment and a binder. He lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is famous for the distinctive flat surfaces of his narrative paintings depicting social problems, as in The Migration of the Negro (1940–41), and Struggle: From the History of the American People (1955).