Pesach Greetings!For Passover 2022, we present some pages from a Haggadah with illustrations by the&
Pesach Greetings!For Passover 2022, we present some pages from a Haggadah with illustrations by the Lithuanian-born American graphic artist Ben Shahn (1898-1969) published in Boston by Little, Brown and Co. in 1965. Shahn originally created eleven of the twelve full-page color plates for this Haggadah over the course of six months circa 1930. The illustrations, like those executed for his secular works, highlight the struggle against oppression, a theme central to the story of Passover. The figures depicted were modeled after the Jews of Djerba, whom Shahn had encountered during a year-long journey through North Africa. After an unsuccessful attempt to print the Haggadah in color, Shahn sold the plates which eventually entered the collection of The Jewish Museum in New York. Nevertheless, in 1958 Shahn met Arnold Fawcus, proprietor of the Paris-based fine-press facsimile publisher Trianon Press, and the two agreed to seeing the Haggadah project through to completion. Shahn produced a twelfth illustration, added ten drawings for the scenes of the popular children’s Passover song Had Gadya (An Only Kid), and designed a frontispiece and title page, while Fawcus commissioned British scholar Cecil Roth to compose an introduction and notes, and reuse Roth’s own 1934 translation of the Haggadah text. The Trianon Press production was produced as a deluxe limited edition of 228 copies signed by Shahn. Our Little, Brown copy is a trade edition of the Trianon production, and is a monument to the skill of one of the twentieth century’s most famous Jewish artists. Sameach Pesach!View our other Passover posts.View our other posts on the work of Ben Shahn. -- source link
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