Artwork Page for Many Cities

Details / Information for Many Cities

Series Title: Rilke Portfolio

Many Cities

c. 1968

Ben Shahn

(American, 1898–1969)
printer

Mourlot

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Culture
America
Medium
lithograph
Measurements
Sheet: 56.8 x 44.8 cm (22 3/8 x 17 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of the Hawken School 2020.98.1
Copyright
© Estate of Ben Shahn / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

This image was inspired by a drawing that Ben Shahn made in 1953 that depicted European cities bombed during World War II.

Description

This print belongs to a series based on the German writer Rainer Maria Rilke’s autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, which dealt with the challenge of artistic creation amidst feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and defeat. American artist Ben Shahn used evocative images to suggest rather than directly interpret the poet’s words.
A vertically oriented grayscale lithograph on off-white paper depicts a four-legged animal in profile facing our left. The beast has a gray body marked with dark vertical stripes, a large dark eye, and clawed feet. It stands upon ground scattered with small black triangular marks. Dense, spindly, vertical forms rise behind the animal, filling the upper half of the composition. A signature appears in the bottom right corner.

Many Cities

c. 1968

Ben Shahn, Mourlot

(American, 1898–1969)
America

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