An installation of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ recent acquisition, Jacob Lawrence’s “Hiroshima” series, will be on view in the academy’s Morris Gallery in the historic landmark building August 1⁄ecember 28.
In 1982, Sidney Shiff, owner of the Limited Editions Club, New York City, commissioned Lawrence (1917′000) to make illustrations for a book of his choice. Lawrence selected Hiroshima . 1946, John Hersey’s extraordinary account of six survivors of the first atomic bomb attack. The result was a series of eight paintings inspired by, but which transcend, Hersey’s text to rank among Lawrence’s most powerful visual statements.
Now part of the academy’s permanent collection, the “Hiroshima” series, 1983, is Lawrence’s devastating evocation of the physical and emotional impact of the Hiroshima bombing. This exhibition will place the “Hiroshima” series in the context of Lawrence’s career as an empathetic chronicler of history and his own time. Rather than “illustrate” the text he selected, Lawrence drew on his own experience in urban communities to imagine the bomb’s “noiseless flash” as it destroyed lives and irrevocably changed world culture.
The “Hiroshima” series includes “Farmers,” “Family,” “People in the Park,” “Man with Birds,” “Street Scene,” “Playground,” “Boy with Kite” and “Market.” All were painted in 1983, tempera and gouache on paper, and each measures 23 by 17½ inches.
Born in Atlantic City, N.J., Lawrence spent part of his childhood in Philadelphia before moving to Harlem in 1930. As a teenager, he was active in after school arts and crafts programs run by the artist Charles Alston, including the WPA Harlem Art Workshop. Early in his career, he established an approach to form and narrative that he would continue to develop and refine throughout his life.
Fascinated by the impact of major historical events on the lives of ordinary people, Lawrence, starting in 1936, frequently researched and then designed multipanel narratives based on key events in American culture and the African American experience. The most famous of these ambitious narratives is the 60-panel “Migration of the Negro” (1940‴1; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), which brought him national attention when it was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in New York City and published in Fortune magazine.
Lawrence also completed epic projects on the lives of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, John Brown and Harriet Tubman. He turned to personal experience to reflect on World War II, life in Harlem, psychiatric treatment at Hillside Hospital in Queens, American history in a series titled “Struggle&⁆rom the History of the American People,” plus extended narratives on everyday life called “Dreams, Supermarket, Games and Builders.” Lawrence was honored with a medal from the Pennsylvania Academy in 1997; he lived, worked and taught in Seattle for nearly three decades and died there in 2000.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is at 118-128 North Broad Street. For information, www.pafa.edu or 215-972-7600.
