Discussion
Discussion
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1969
Lithograph
9 3/4 x 12 in. (24.8 x 30.5 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 250.
Workers talk across a table in a lunchroom. Benton drew the scene in 1937, when Life magazine sent him to report on the Detroit-area sit-down strikes; he described it as a union recruiter talking with a Black worker, the union boss behind them. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
Some reporters had called the strikes the start of a revolution; Benton wrote that he found no desire for revolution among the workers, only a wish for more money. An impression is in the New Britain Museum of American Art. (Fath 82)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Rejecting the European modernism of his early years, he became, with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a leader of American Regionalism, painting the farmers, laborers, and folklore of the Midwest and South in a dynamic, sculptural style. His major murals include America Today (1930–31, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) in the Missouri State Capitol, and in 1934 he became the first artist to appear on the cover of Time. Beginning in 1934, Associated American Artists published his lithographs in editions sold by mail at modest prices, making them among the most widely collected American prints of the century. Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock was his student, and later at the Kansas City Art Institute. He died in his Kansas City studio in 1975.
Workers talk across a table in a lunchroom. Benton drew the scene in 1937, when Life magazine sent him to report on the Detroit-area sit-down strikes; he described it as a union recruiter talking with a Black worker, the union boss behind them. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
Some reporters had called the strikes the start of a revolution; Benton wrote that he found no desire for revolution among the workers, only a wish for more money. An impression is in the New Britain Museum of American Art. (Fath 82)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Rejecting the European modernism of his early years, he became, with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a leader of American Regionalism, painting the farmers, laborers, and folklore of the Midwest and South in a dynamic, sculptural style. His major murals include America Today (1930–31, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) in the Missouri State Capitol, and in 1934 he became the first artist to appear on the cover of Time. Beginning in 1934, Associated American Artists published his lithographs in editions sold by mail at modest prices, making them among the most widely collected American prints of the century. Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock was his student, and later at the Kansas City Art Institute. He died in his Kansas City studio in 1975.
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