GAINESVILLE, FL.- History, Labor, Life: The Prints of Jacob Lawrence will be on view at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida from Feb. 13 to Aug. 5, 2018. This traveling exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of influential American artist Jacob Lawrence’s (1917–2000) printmaking oeuvre, featuring more than 90 works produced from 1963 to 2000. The exhibition explores three major themes that occupied the artist’s graphic works.

Lawrence started exploring printmaking as an already well-established artist. Printmaking suited his bold formal and narrative style exceptionally well. The relationship between his painting and printmaking is intertwined, with the artist revisiting and remaking earlier paintings as prints. The inherent multiplicity of this medium provided an opportunity for the artist to reach broader audiences.

Lawrence was primarily concerned with the narration of African-American experiences and histories. His acute observations of community life, work, struggle and emancipation during his lifetime were rendered alongside vividly imagined chronicles of the past. The past and present in his practice are intrinsically linked, providing insight into the social, economic and political realities that continue to impact and shape contemporary society today.

History, Labor, Life: The Prints of Jacob Lawrence is organized by SCAD Museum of Art in collaboration with the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, and is curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, SCAD head curator of exhibitions. This exhibition is sponsored locally by Michael and Donna Singer, Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis, Jr., the Harn Program Endowment, Kenneth and Laura Berns, and Visit Gainesville with additional support from friends of the Harn Museum of Art.