Ben Shahn Biography and Artwork

Born in Lithuania in 1898, Ben Shahn was a leading American social realist artist of the 1930s. He studied at New York University and City College during the 1920s before gaining major recognition for his series The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1932. Shahn’s expressive figurative paintings, murals, and posters were inexorably tied to his pursuit of social justice and lifelong activism within leftist political beliefs.

Shahn’s work displayed a combination of realism and abstraction, addressing various social and political causes. He had a deep affection for American workers, immigrants, and disenfranchised communities, often expressing an abhorrence for injustice and oppression. One of his most notable works is his mural in Jersey Homesteads (now Roosevelt), New Jersey. Commissioned by the United States government as part of the New Deal art programs during the Great Depression, it depicts scenes from rural life with an emphasis on immigration to America.

Shahn was also known for his left-wing political views and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content. His work has been offered at auction multiple times with prices ranging from $5 USD to $95,000 USD. Despite passing away in 1969, he remains a significant contributor to American Social Realism today due to his unique style combining artistic expression with politics as well as tackling real-world subjects that resonate today like labor laws reform incrimination among other topics related to worker rights.

All Ben Shahn Artwork on Artchive

Artwork Name Year Medium
Third Allegory 1955 tempera,watercolor,paper,masonite
Spring 1946
Signs
Self-Portrait Among Church Goers watercolor,paper
The Four Prosecutors - Sacco-Vanzetti Case 1932
The Red Stairway
Street musicians in Maynardville 1935
Seward Park 1936
The Harpie
Sign on a restaurant We Cater to White Trade only 1938
Those unknown
Three Creole Girls 1935
Three Lutes
Age of Anxiety 1953
Three men
Three Men
Trapper's house 1935
Vanity
Years of Dust', US government poster lithography
Advertisements from Natchez, Mississippi of a popular malaria cure 1935
Age of anxiety
Blind Botanist
Amusement Park
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices 1935
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices 1935
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices 1935
Applicants waiting for jobs in front of FERA offices 1935
American Life #14
Allegory 1948
Bookshop: Hebrew Books, Holy Day Books 1953
Cotton picker, Arkansas 1935
East Side Soap Box
Composition for Clarinets and Tin Horn 1951
Death Of A Miner
Demonstration in Paris 1932
Double self-portrait 1933
Coal company town in Jenkins 1935
Children lined up at enterance to Casino Cinema 1935
Cherubs and Children
Erinys 1957
Four Piece Orchestra
Identity
Florestine Carson, unemployed Creole Negro trapper, and daughter 1935
Fourth of July: Orator
French Workers 1942
Helix and Crystal 1957
Fiddlin Bill Henseley, Mountain Fiddler 1937
Father and Son 1946
Étude pour la peinture murale du Jersey Homestead 1936
Man reading newspaper in Jackson Square 1935
Maimonides
Untitled
Loading recently mined coal in Jenkins 1935
Martin Luther King 1965
Miner's Wives 1944 tempera,cardboard
New York 1947
Liberation 1945
Italian Landscape II: Europa 1944
Italian Landscape c.1944 paper
Untitled
Untitled
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Untitled
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Untitled
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Untitled
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Untitled
Poster in protest of the exection of Sacco and Vanzetti 1932
Poster for Congress of Industrial Rights 1946
Second Allegory 1953
Portrait of myself as a young boy 1943 gouache,board
Renascence
Sacco and Vanzetti 1932
Scene in Jackson Square 1935
Portrait of Dag Hammarskjold 1962 wood
November 22 1963
Untitled
Handball 1939 Tempera on paper over composition board
The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti 1931 - 1932 tempera,Canvas
Blind Accordion Player 1945 Tempera on board
Vacant Lot 1939 Watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on plywood panel
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