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BEN SHAHN
(American, born Lithuania, 1898-1969)
Farmers
Gouache on composition board
31 x 42”
Allocation from the United States Government (Farm Security Administration) L1943.2.139

Ben Shahn, American photographer, painter, and lithographer, immigrated to New York in 1906. He began his artistic training at the age of fifteen, when he began an apprenticeship at Hassenberg’s Lithography Shop in Manhattan; he attended high school in the evenings. In 1916 Shahn took drawing classes at the Art Students League, and after studying Biology at New York University and the City College of New York, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design to pursue a career as an artist. Shahn traveled extensively during the 1920s, visiting Europe—where he studied the works of Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, and others—and more adventurous locations such as North Africa. Upon his return to New York, he met photographer Walker Evans, with whom he shared a studio, and he explored a number of media, including watercolor. By 1932 he was considered a social realist, and during the 1930s and 1940s he was employed by both the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project and the Farm Security Administration.

Like the W.P.A. (see Odd Fellows Hall by O. Louis Guglielmi), the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration (F.S.A.) was a government-sponsored program. Charged with the purpose of recording and publicizing the government’s farm programs, the F.S.A., which commenced in 1935 under the direction of Roy Stryker, aimed “to introduce Americans to America.” Staff photographers, who included Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post-Wolcott, and Shahn, were sent to rural and small-town America to capture vernacular and commonplace images. Farmers, undoubtedly inspired by the F.S.A. photographs, embodies the plight of the American farmer during the Depression-ridden America. Shahn’s use of somber color and shadow intensify this grave scene, in which three farmers contemplate the severity of their situation. The expression of the man in the foreground, who closes his eyes as if in prayer, is especially foreboding.