Jacob Lawrence

born Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1917; died Seattle, Washington, 2000

BiographyJacob Lawrence is one of the Northwest’s most celebrated artists. He was an impassioned observer and storyteller whose art documented both the African American experience as well as the larger human struggle for freedom and social justice. Lawrence was raised in Harlem, and his works from the 1930s and 1940s capture the ever-changing street life in gouache, watercolor, and tempera. He also created a body of work focusing on important African American figures and several large multi-part narratives. In 1970, he moved to the Northwest and became an art professor at the University of Washington, teaching painting and printmaking as well as continuing to build an international career. A major retrospective of his international career was organized by The Phillips Collection in 2001 and traveled to five additional venues including the Seattle Art Museum, one of several major considerations of his work in the past two decades.

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