{"id":5342,"date":"2021-05-13T15:10:45","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T21:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5342"},"modified":"2021-05-13T15:10:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T21:10:45","slug":"the-peoples-painter-a-visit-from-evan-turk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5342","title":{"rendered":"The People’s Painter<\/em>: A Visit from Evan Turk"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nCynthia Levinson’s<\/a><\/strong> newest picture book, The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Abrams, April 2021), illustrated by Evan Turk<\/a><\/strong>, is a force of nature. The book chronicles the life, starting from his childhood in Lithuania, of Shahn (1898-1969), the Jewish artist and activist whose figurative paintings and posters aligned with his social justice causes.<\/p>\n

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With reverence, eloquence, and detailed backmatter notes that lay out her sources (the book also opens with a Yiddish glossary and pronunciation guide), Levinson captures the pivotal events of Shahn’s childhood \u2014 mainly (but certainly not only), that his father, who “had been demanding fair pay for working people,” was banished to Siberia by Czar Nicholas II’s men, the family eventually joining him in America after his escape in 1906. (In the striking spread pictured below, we see that Shahn had to leave “the shtetl, the only home he knew,” as well as his grandfather.) As an immigrant, Shahn is bewildered by America but, by the age of twelve, decides to become an artist. <\/p>\n

Levinson describes Shahn’s schooling, (unexpected) path of training in lithography, and entry into art school \u2014 and his discovery of his love of painting “stories and people. (“His teachers, though, insisted that paintings weren’t supposed to tell stories. That pictures should be beautiful \u2014 not real life.”) We then read about his social activism and, “infuriated at the injustice” over the 1927 execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, decision to paint his<\/em> vision: “‘If I am to be a painter, I must show the world how it looks through my eyes, not theirs. What shall I paint? Stories.'” In the 1950s, the FBI investigated Shahn, but he continued with depicting “people clamoring for their rights.” <\/p>\n

Evan Turk’s dynamic, remarkably layered, and richly colored paintings play with perspectives in eye-opening ways and expertly capture the emotional subtext of Levinson’s telling. The closing spread, not pictured here today, incorporates Hebrew lettering, an elderly Shahn, and a series of elegantly wielded doves to beautiful<\/em> effect. These are spreads to linger over; though some final spreads are pictured here today, I highly recommend finding a copy of your own to take it all in. <\/p>\n

Evan visits today to share preliminary images. I thank him for sharing. The three sets of images below are, as he puts it, “preparatory and practice paintings for the book, early sketches practicing Shahn\u2019s style, and thumbnails\/sketches playing around with the shapes of Hebrew letters influencing the shapes of the characters” as well as color thumbnail paintings; the final round of his sketches; and some final spreads from the book. <\/p>\n

Enjoy!
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Prepatory work:<\/em><\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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Four images above: Thumbnails<\/em>
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Sketches of Shahn<\/em>
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Family sketch<\/em>
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Working on his Hebrew letters<\/em>
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Shahn<\/em>
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Shahn’s mame, Gittel<\/em>
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Shahn’s tate, Hessel<\/em>
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The schoolhouse<\/em>
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A chalk drawing<\/em>
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Samples<\/em>
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Cover sketches<\/em>
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Final round of sketches:<\/em><\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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Some final spreads:<\/em><\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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“… As the stagecoach pulled away,
Ben had to let go of his grandfather’s hand. He wailed.”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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(Click spread to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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“America bewildered the new immigrant. …”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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“‘I like stories and people,’ he explained. …”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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“For the next sixteen years, Ben continued to portray
stories of people clamoring for their rights. …”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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(Click cover to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

THE PEOPLE’S PAINTER: HOW BEN SHAHN FOUGHT FOR JUSTICE WITH ART. Copyright \u00a9 2021 by Cynthia Levinson. Illustrations \u00a9 2021 by Evan Turk. Final illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Abrams Books for Young Readers, New York. All other images reproduced by permission of Evan Turk.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Cynthia Levinson’s newest picture book, The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art (Abrams, April 2021), illustrated by Evan Turk, is a force of nature. The book chronicles the life, starting from his childhood in Lithuania, of Shahn (1898-1969), the Jewish artist and activist whose figurative paintings and posters aligned with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,26,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-interviews","category-nonfiction","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}