Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn ( born September 12, 1898 in Kaunas, Lithuania, † March 14, 1969 in New York City, New York) was an American painter and printmaker and is regarded as a representative of social realism, a sense of American realism. He stepped out artistically as a photographer.

Life

Shahns parents emigrated with him in 1906 in the United States of America. There, the young Ben went into the teaching of a lithographer. From 1919 on, he studied at the New York State University and then at City College in New York. In 1922 he moved to the National Academy of Design.

Shahn also used photographic models for his pictures, first from newspapers, later he himself began to photograph and to use your own photos. Photographed on the streets of New York and he documented the lives of workers and immigrants during the Great Depression. At the same time he was an early representative of street photography.

Work

In his paintings Shahn tried the same presented in a form of naive realism societies and grievances. By meeting with Diego Rivera, he came to the wall painting in the thirties. Among the most important works of the images Shahn Ohio Magic and The Passion of Sacco & Vanzetti include ( The burial of the executed Sacco and Vanzetti, 1931-32 ). In the latter he processed the controversial death sentence of American justice against Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, which became internationally known and criticized by a worldwide public as a politically motivated miscarriage of justice.

Ben works Shahns were represented at the documenta in Kassel 2 (1959 ), Documenta III (1964 ), and even after his death at Documenta 6 in 1977.