Art World Mourns the Loss of Jacob Lawrence - Brief Article - Obituary

SEATTLE--Forecasters in Seattle last week may have credited recent uniquely dry skies to a warm front and the science of the season, but it seems the phenomenon could be more accurately explained: Since artist Jacob Lawrence had left the living world behind on June 9, the heavens simply had no reason to cry.

Not so for those whose feet remained firmly planted on the terra firma. Here, tears flowed freely for the loss of a man whose work portrayed the beauty and brutality of the black experience. "He will truly be missed," said Bruce Teleky, of Bruce Teleky Inc. in New York. "He was an interesting, thought-provoking person, as well as was one of the most well-known black masters of all time."

Lawrence's wife of 59 years, painter Gwendolyn Knight, survives him. So do a collection of narrative works upon which he made his colorful, Cubist-inspired trademark since he began painting in the `30s.

As a young man, Lawrence found himself living in Harlem and attending art classes. There he met his mentor, artist Charles Alston, whose tutelage would soon lead Lawrence into the folds of those leading the Harlem Renaissance: painters Aaron Douglas and William Johnson; writer Langston Hughes; philosopher Alain Locke; and sculptor Augusta Savage.

The group's significance was not lost on Lawrence. Influenced by their passion and driven by his own, Lawrence chose Haiti's struggle for independence as the subject for his first multi-part, 1937 narrative "Toussaint L'Ouverture." Two series of paintings chronicling the lives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman soon followed. Their acclaim, however, was no match for the fervor that greeted his landmark series, "The Migration of the American Negro," in 1940. When Fortune magazine reproduced 26 of the series' images, the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection in Washington wrestled to acquire the series in its entirety. Both had to settle for half.

On he painted, through his time in the Coast Guard, into and through the exploding Civil Rights movement of the `60s, and right up until the week before his death.

However, it was not through his paintings alone that he touched the world. Lawrence reached out to young artists, spending the latter part of his life teaching at the Black Mountain College (N.C.); New York's Art Students League, Pratt Institute and the New School for Social Research; and as the Skowhegan School in Maine.

And though Lawrence might have passed on before the world was ready to let him go, many will find some solace in his works yet to be unveiled. An large mosaic he designed in 1997 will be unveiled in NYC'S Times Square subway station in 2001.

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