Jacob Lawrence: African American Modernist
Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort - through 4 January 2026
https://www.kunsthalkade.nl/nl/tentoonstellingen/jacob-lawrence/
The Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort is renowned for its exhibitions that broaden the scope of modern and contemporary art beyond Europe. The institution has a remarkable ability to balance accessibility with depth, offering audiences encounters with artists and histories that are often overlooked elsewhere.
Following on from Soft Power. Arte Brasil (2016), Tell Freedom: 15 South African Artists (2018), and Tell Me Your Story: 100 Years of African American Art (2020), Kunsthal KAdE now presents Jacob Lawrence: African American Modernist, the first extensive survey of the artist’s work in Europe. Five years in the making, this exhibition is also the first major overview in twenty-five years, following ‘Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence at the Whitney Museum in 2003.
Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) was one of the first African-American artists to gain national recognition. In 1941, aged just twenty-four, he exhibited his complete Migration Series at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in New York. This was a groundbreaking moment, as Halpert was one of the first gallerists in the city to represent an African-American artist. That same year, Fortune magazine published a selection of the panels, introducing his work to a national audience. The series was jointly acquired the following year by the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection, firmly establishing Lawrence within the canon of American modernism. His bold, narrative style offered an African-American perspective on United States history that had rarely been seen in art before.
Based in Amersfoort, director Robbert Roos and exhibition curator Judith D. van Meeuwen demonstrate how smaller institutions can create exhibitions of global significance. Their curiosity and persistence make international art histories accessible locally.
Stepping into the exhibition, visitors are surrounded by depictions of figures and scenes painted in vivid colours such as ochres, browns, reds, greens and blues. Divided into several focus rooms, the exhibition traces distinct phases in Lawrence’s artistic and personal life, contextualising them within the social, cultural, and political reality of the segregated United States in which he was born and witnessed change. Photographs, notes, and archival material are displayed in a second scenographical line closer to the floor. Visitors can easily look at the paintings on the wall and then look down for more context.
Lawrence (1917–2000) portrayed collective scenes from African-American life: people working, studying, debating and celebrating. His figures are stylised rather than individualised, emphasising shared experience over portraiture. Themes include self-organised art workshops for Black artists barred from segregated academies, the Harlem Renaissance and references to prominent figures in the Black intelligentsia, such as Alain Locke, Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass.
A highlight is four panels from The Migration Series (1941), on loan from the Phillips Collection. This epic series of sixty panels chronicles the mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in search of a better life. Nearby, the War Series (1946–47) reflects Lawrence’s time in the US Coast Guard during the Second World War. From Struggle: From the History of the American People (1954–56), panel 26, ‘Peace’, commemorates the Treaty of Ghent (1814), which brought an end to the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Its fragile plants symbolise renewed hope for peace.
Another room introduces Lawrence’s journeys to Nigeria. In 1962, he travelled to Lagos for the closing of his exhibition at the West African Cultural Centre. Two years later, he returned with his wife, the artist Gwendolyn Knight, for an eight-month stay across Lagos, Ibadan, and Osogbo. This experience deepened his sense of rhythm and colour, linking his modernism to the artistic pulse of West Africa.
Jacob Lawrence: African American sparks a desire to understand the broader world in which Lawrence worked, including the social history, artistic networks, and political urgency of the time. The accompanying catalogue, edited by Robbert Roos and Judith D. van Meeuwen, provides further context through archival material and essays on the Harlem Renaissance and the Black intelligentsia. There is also a contribution tracing Lawrence’s connection to West Africa. Together, these elements provide the historical and cultural depth necessary to position Lawrence not only as an American painter, but also as a significant figure within global modernism.
