Ben Shahn. Rainer M. Rilke. For the Sake of a Single Verse. New York: Atelier Mourlot, 1968. First edition, on...

Description

One of 200 Copies With Twenty-Four Signed Lithographs

Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American painter, photographer, and lithographer best known for his works of social realism. He received instruction as a lithographer's apprentice, a student at the City College of New York and at the National Academy of Design, and also as an apprentice to Diego Rivera while Rivera executed his controversial Rockefeller Center mural. Shahn used techniques learned from Rivera in murals and panel paintings commissioned by numerous Federal agencies. During the 1940's, Shahn executed graphics for the Office of War Information and, later, for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1947. After the 1940's Shahn moved from what he called "social realism" to a "personal realism." He also increasingly turned to tempera painting and graphics. Yet his iconography was never "personal" or autobiographical. Rather, he reached a universal expression through the devices of symbolism and allegory, the stylized line, and the colorful palette, which are hallmarks of his style. His work can be found in the collections of many major museums including The Philips Collection, Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others.