signed first edition
1993 · New York
by Lawrence, Jacob; Myers, Walter Dean (poem)
New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1993. First trade edition, signed by American artist Jacob Lawrence, of this picture book featuring his Migration Series, a cycle of paintings depicting the exodus of Black Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the early twentieth century. Lawrence launched his career in Harlem as a history painter in the late 1930s, producing narrative cycles about Toussaint L'Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. The Migration Series was his first cycle to depict contemporary American life, and the first to represent a collective subject: "I tried to create a staccato-like rhythm over and over and over again with the shapes as they move." In 1941, the completed series, then titled The Migration of the Negro, was featured in Fortune magazine and exhibited at Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery, making Lawrence the first African-American artist to be represented by a New York gallery. The sixty-panel series was jointly purchased by the Phillips Collection (odd numbers) and the Museum of Modern Art (even). From 1993 to 1995, the sixty paintings were reunited and exhibited as The Migration Series in Washington, Milwaukee, Portland, Birmingham, St. Louis, New York, Atlanta, Denver, and Chicago. Lawrence revised the original text that had accompanied the paintings a half-century earlier, and recorded an interview about the Great Migration that serves as the basis of this volume's introduction. The accompanying poster features Lawrence's famous panel 58, originally captioned "In the North the Negro had better educational facilities," depicting three schoolgirls at a classroom chalkboard. A fine signed copy, accompanied by the publisher's promotional poster and the original MoMA exhibition brochure. Oblong volume, measuring 9 x 11 inches: [48]. Original terracotta paper boards, black cloth spine lettered in gilt, terracotta endpapers. Original unclipped color pictorial dust jacket, color illustrations throughout text. Signed by Jacob Lawrence on title page. With: publisher's promotional poster, measuring 18 x 22.5 inches, and original brochure from the Museum of Modern Art exhibition of the Migration Series.
(Inventory #: 1003871)