BEN SHAHN (1898-1969) A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND. 1948.

46x30 1/4 inches. Union Label, New York.
Condition A-: expertly repaired tears in margins; minor restoration in margins.
Born in Lithuania in 1898, Shahn immigrated to America with his family when he was 8 years old. From almost the beginning of his artistic career Shahn's work was political in nature. Shahn produced two posters for the U.S. Government during the Second World was and then designed a series of images that were printed by the CIO Political Action Committee on topics ranging from voter registration to thanks to farmers. In 1944 he designed "Our Friend," a poster supporting Franklin Roosevelt in his fourth bid for the Presidency. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is not a traditional campaign poster, it is more of a political cartoon or a caricature, touting neither of the men depicted, but rather the unseen, third, Progressive Party candidate. "His intent was to present the two major parties as indistinguishable, with only the Progressive Party offering the voters a bid for change." (Prescott p. 133) "The two candidates [Dewey and Truman], on whom Shahn obviously looked with equal suspicion, are ingeniously placed, Dewey atop a piano and Truman at its keyboard, before sheets of music whose titles are a vital part of the artist's satirical message... Details are handled with remarkable acuteness: the strained cordiality of Dewey's smile...the wrinkles in Truman's trousers and the amateurish flourish with which his right hand strikes a chord; the definition of both candidates' feet. Yet distortions and elisions are just as important, as in the aggrandizement of the two politicians' heads and the subtly way in which Truman's eyeglasses are left blank and the teeth of both men are frozen in bright evenness. This is an image intended to provoke laughter regardless of one's political convictions." (Soby, Graphic Arts, p. 17) Prescott p. 158.