Jacob Lawrence: Prints and Selected Paintings
and
Gwen Knight: Selected Works 1945-2004
May 11 - June 30, 2004

Jacob Lawrence and Gwen Knight met in the mid-1930s and married in 1941. Over the next six decades each continued to create art according to their own path: Lawrence with narrative paintings of American history and African American life, and Knight concentrating on portraiture, urban landscapes, and still life. DC Moore Gallery presents the work of these two artists in paired exhibitions that explore their individual visions and allow for a consideration of their art within the context of the life they shared over nearly sixty years of marriage and making art. Jacob Lawrence: Prints and Selected Paintings features a complete set of the silk screen prints based on Lawrence’s original painting series titled The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture. Additional selected prints and paintings round out the exhibition. Gwen Knight: Selected Works 1945-2004 presents an overview of Knight’s work in a variety of media, including paintings, drawings, and prints.

The Lawrence marriage was a true partnership in every sense of the word. Since 1941 Jacob Lawrence has been considered one of America’s preeminent painters. Gwen Knight continuously pursued her work in painting, printmaking, and sculpture. The couple’s mutual respect and love for each other was evident to all who knew them. There is no doubt that each partner played a significant role in the development of the other’s attitudes and the content of their art.

Lawrence and Knight met in the mid-1930s at the WPA Harlem Art Workshop in painter Charles Alston’s studio at 306 West 141st Street. Alston was the Harlem director of the WPA Mural Project and the workshop was a prime gathering place for artists in Harlem. In the late 1930s, Lawrence became an avid reader of African American history and was deeply stimulated by what he learned about the struggles and convictions of such legendary figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown. He became particularly fascinated with the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian slave who, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, led his country to freedom from French rule and founded the Republic of Haiti. Feeling that a single painting could not do justice to L’Ouverture’s story, Lawrence chose to depict the narrative in a 41 panel series of small tempera paintings on paper, the first of several important historical series he would create over the next few years. Lawrence later created 15 silk screen prints based on paintings from the series. A complete set of these prints is on view in the current exhibition.

Throughout the late 1930s Lawrence and Knight were constant companions and in July, 1941 they married and were off to Louisiana and Virginia for an extended honeymoon. While they were away Lawrence’s career began to take off. He was accepted for representation by Downtown Gallery’s Edith Halpert, one of the most innovative art dealers of the time. In December, 1941 she presented his sixty panel work The Migration Series in a group exhibition of African American artists. The work was purchased jointly by the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection and twenty six of the panels were featured in an article in Fortune magazine, turning the 23 year old Lawrence into a nationally known figure virtually overnight. The Lawrences returned to New York in July, 1942 and settled into an apartment on the outskirts of Harlem. Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Coast Guard in October, 1943 and was assigned to the Public Relations Branch to paint Coast Guard life. Upon his discharge in December, 1945 he returned to Harlem and resumed painting scenes of neighborhood life. Lawrence and Knight were invited by Josef Albers to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina during the summer of 1946 and the experience was a memorable and important one for both of them.

During the 1950s, the Lawrences lived and worked mostly in and around New York City with summer fellowships at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs and the Skowhegan School in Maine. In 1955 Lawrence took a teaching position at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (he would remain there until 1970). In 1962 he took a short trip to Nigeria to accompany an exhibition of his work. It was his first trip to Africa and he found the experience so stimulating that he returned with Knight in 1964 to live and work for eight months. Lawrence and Knight found great inspiration in the sights, sounds, and intense sensations of the African continent and people and both created memorable works during their extended stay. Upon resuming life in New York, Lawrence entered his most overtly political period, creating a number of works inspired by the civil rights movement. Knight, on the other hand, concentrated mostly on portraiture in the 1960s, her work providing a decided counterpoint to that of her husband.

Lawrence was offered, and accepted, a teaching position at the University of Washington in 1971, and the Lawrences moved to Seattle. Although this required major changes for the two confirmed New Yorkers, they felt ready for it. Initially not expecting to stay for more than a few years, they remained in Seattle until Lawrence’s death in June, 2000. Gwen Knight, who will turn 91 in 2004, continues to live and work there.

Over the last decade, many major traveling exhibitions of Jacob Lawrence’s work have been presented in museums across the country. These include: Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, organized by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, organized by the Seattle Museum of Art; Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938-40, organized by the Hampton University Museum in Virginia; and Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series, organized jointly by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A definitive two-volume catalogue raisonné and examination of Lawrence’s life and work was published in the fall of 2000 by the University of Washington Press.

Over the last decade, the work of Gwen Knight has been featured in a number of solo exhibitions, including at: the Museum of African-American Life and Culture in Dallas, TX; the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, Jackson, MS; Black Mountain Center for the Arts, NC; and, most recently, the traveling exhibition Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, organized by the Tacoma Art Museum and accompanied by a book with the same title.