Ben Shahn 1898 - 1969

Kennedy Galleries, New York
Private Collection, New York, 1973 (acquired from the above)
By descent in the family to the present owner

Boston, Massachusetts, The Institute of Contemporary Art, circa 1940
New York, Kennedy Galleries, Ben Shahn, October-November 1968, no. 17, illustrated

Very good, original condition. One small loss near left center edge.
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In 1938 Ben Shahn won a Treasury Department commission to produce 13 large fresco panels for the main lobby of the Bronx Central Annex Post Office in New York, which he completed in 1939. That same year he executed nine sketches, including Freedom of the Press, which was design #4, for a series of murals on the Four Freedoms intended for the post office in St. Louis, Missouri. In his essay for the exhibition Ben Shahn, Frank Getlein notes that Shahn's "notably ambitious mural on the Four Freedoms" was never executed in full scale "because of political reasons" (Ben Shahn, New York, 1968, np). In 1940, Shahn, in competition with 375 artists, won the commission for the murals to be displayed in the main corridor of the Social Security Building in Washington, D.C.