Author

Books by Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn (1898–1969) was a Lithuanian-born American painter, graphic artist, and social commentator whose work documented Depression-era poverty, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and American labor history. He worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration and as a poster designer during World War II. His paintings combine photographic realism with strong graphic sensibility. The Shape of Content, drawn from his 1956–57 Norton Lectures at Harvard, remains one of the most direct statements of a practicing artist's philosophy of making and meaning in the twentieth century.