Description
Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, NJ. His family moved to Harlem in 1930, where, as an adolescent, Lawrence came into contact with some of the greatest artistic and intellectual minds of his generation. Before he was twenty, Lawrence had developed a powerful, concise ‘modern’ style that expressed all of the vibrancy, colors and pathos of Harlem’s neighborhood and occupants. At the age of 23, Lawrence gained national recognition with his 60-panel The Migration Series, which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. As his career progressed, he became known for his modernist illustrations of everyday life as well as narratives of African-American history and historical figures.
