Exhibition Catalog | Jacob Lawrence

MITCHELL
Lawrence was thirteen years old when he first studied art at an after-school
program operated at Utopia Children’s House in Harlem. His primary instructor there,
the painter and sculptor Charles Alston, proved to be a lasting mentor. The strong,
crisp shapes and vivid colors Lawrence worked with in these years provided the foundation
for the style he would develop over the next seven decades. He recalled that
even as a young artist his “motivation was so strong that [my instructors] tried not to
interfere by influencing me.” He added that it was only “later . . . I became aware that
my style was different.”³ Alston introduced him to water-based paints and paper supports—the
materials Lawrence would also favor as an adult.⁴ After 1932 he continued
to work with Alston at the wpa Harlem Workshop and rented a space within the older
artist’s studio on 141st Street.
While growing up Lawrence knew the visual artists, publishers, performers,
writers, and political activists who made Harlem the epicenter of black culture
in America. Their voices guided him to develop the bold visual style in which he told
stories relevant to his life experiences. For instance, as a child Lawrence had absorbed
the story of Genesis from the famously dynamic sermons of pastor Adam Clayton
Powell Sr., which he heard at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. In Lawrence’s set
of eight prints recounting Genesis, published in 1990 (cats. 44–51), a rapt congregation
watches a charismatic preacher describe the progress of Creation so vividly that
it seems to transpire before their eyes. Additionally, the 1943 painting At Times It Is
Hard to Get a Table in a Pool Room (cover, cat. 1), exceptional for its clean geometries
and vibrant colors, expresses the artist’s close observation of the places where the
community gathered.
Lawrence also benefitted from being in the orbit of the most significant
professional artist in Harlem, the sculptor Augusta Savage. It was at her studio in the
early 1930s that he met Gwendolyn Knight, an accomplished sculptor and dancer who
studied under Savage. Born in Barbados, she was a few years older than Lawrence; the
two would marry in the summer of 1941.⁵ Savage mentored Lawrence by steering him
toward greater opportunities and connecting him with older, politically engaged African
American artists.⁶ Savage’s strong character shines through in Knight Lawrence’s
posthumous portrait of 1967 (cat. 10), a striking example of her painting that is part of
the Kayden gift.
Lawrence dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen to focus on
art. From then on his education was self-directed, and the scope of his influences
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