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Jacob Lawrence

1917-2000

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Most known for the Migration Series, a 60-panel painting that he completed at the age of  23, which depicted the move of African Americans from the south to the north during the industrial revolution, Jacob Lawrence is one of the most renowned African American artists of the 20th century. He was heavily influenced by black culture in Harlem during the early 1900s. After being drafted in World War II, Lawrence received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to create the War Series. In 1971, he accepted a position teaching art at the University of Washington in Seattle from which he would retire in 1986. While he was a professor he continued to produce commissioned work for the NAACP, the Children’s Defense Fund, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

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