Growing up in Harlem
In the 1920s, Harlem became a coveted address. The neighborhood in New York City was synonymous with an outpouring of production in the visual arts, music, literature, theater, and dance that some began referring to the creative era as the Harlem Renaissance.
Jacob Lawrence moved to Harlem when he was 13 and grew up in this vibrant community. He took art classes at the Utopia House and the Harlem Workshop while carefully observing the activity and rhythm's of Harlem’s daily life.
Lawrence grew up among some of the most well-known African American thinkers during the Harlem Renaissance. He lived in the same building as the poet Claude McKay and attended the Apollo Theater where he recalled viewing performances in which “everything was jagged, bright, and brittle...so maybe my color and my shapes have this quality and developed out of that experience.”
In the classroom activities below, students will identify and compare the different influences from the Harlem Renaissance on Jacob Lawrence’s work.
Apollo Theater Playbill
Frank Schiffman Apollo Theater Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
1941
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Aaron Douglas
Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers
Art and Artifacts Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Oil on canvas, 1934
View DetailJacob Lawrence
This is Harlem
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. © 2006 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Gouache on paper, 1943
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