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158
POSTER: BEN SHAHN (1898-1969). OUR FRIEND. 19
BEN SHAHN (1898-1969) OUR FRIEND. 1944.
30x40 inches, 76x101 1/2 cm. L. I. P. & BA. Union Label, New York.
Condition B+: expertly restored losses in text; repaired tears and creases in margins and image. Japan.
Born in Lithuania in 1898, Shahn immigrated to America with his family when he was eight years old. From almost the beginning of his artistic career Shahn's work was political in nature, when, in 1930, he created a series of 23 gouache paintings relating to the Sacco and Vanzetti case which was taking the world by storm. "This poster was used in the hotly contested 1944 campaign in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term. Shahn presented Roosevelt as a warmly sympathetic man whose visage looms father-like above the crowd " (Prescott p. 128). The poster is infused with pro-Democratic symbolism, including "buttons for the AFL and the CIO, hat tickets for the Grand Lodge and the National Farm Bureau, a soldier's hat, the hands of black and white races . . . a child symbolizing the nation's future . . . [and the good omen of] the blue sky above" (ibid). According to Shahn's wife, the little boy was actually their son, Jonathan. Prescott 151.
30x40 inches, 76x101 1/2 cm. L. I. P. & BA. Union Label, New York.
Condition B+: expertly restored losses in text; repaired tears and creases in margins and image. Japan.
Born in Lithuania in 1898, Shahn immigrated to America with his family when he was eight years old. From almost the beginning of his artistic career Shahn's work was political in nature, when, in 1930, he created a series of 23 gouache paintings relating to the Sacco and Vanzetti case which was taking the world by storm. "This poster was used in the hotly contested 1944 campaign in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term. Shahn presented Roosevelt as a warmly sympathetic man whose visage looms father-like above the crowd " (Prescott p. 128). The poster is infused with pro-Democratic symbolism, including "buttons for the AFL and the CIO, hat tickets for the Grand Lodge and the National Farm Bureau, a soldier's hat, the hands of black and white races . . . a child symbolizing the nation's future . . . [and the good omen of] the blue sky above" (ibid). According to Shahn's wife, the little boy was actually their son, Jonathan. Prescott 151.
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