Jacob Lawrence: African American Modernist

In the autumn of 2025, Kunsthal KAdE will present the first-ever overview in Europe of the work of African American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000). Lawrence gained recognition in 1941 with his iconic painting series "The Great Migration," a sequence of 60 panels, half of which are housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the other half in the Phillips Collection in Washington. In this series, Lawrence tells the story of the mass migration of the Black population from the South of the United States to the North. Throughout his career, Jacob Lawrence focused on African American history and the daily life in Harlem, New York, the neighbourhood he grew up in. Through art workshops in Harlem in the 1930s, Lawrence developed his own autonomous painting style in the aftermath of the Harlem Renaissance and is considered one of the most important African American painters of the 20th century. His colourful narrative version of collage-cubism has gained him his own specific place in American art history.

Three projects by contemporary artists are shown in conjunction with the work of Jacob Lawrence. Barbara Earl Thomas—an early student of Jacob Lawrence when he taught at the University of Washington in Seattle—created four works as an “homage” to her former teacher. 

Rashad Doucet is a professor of sequential art at the School of Art and Design in Savannah. For the exhibition he made a graphic novel about the life of the artist.

And poet and performer Dean Bowen contributed artistically to each space with texts reflecting on the works of Jacob Lawrence.

The exhibition will be on view from September 27, 2025, to January 4, 2026.