Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917-2000)
General Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1986 (based on a 1938 painting)
Silkscreen print
Lent by the David C. Driskell Collection
Of the many depictions of Toussaint L’Ouverture, this one by the great
American modern artist Jacob Lawrence is perhaps the most powerful. The haunting
image is from a suite of forty-one paintings about Toussaint’s life,
which Lawrence exhibited to great acclaim at the 1940 Chicago Negro Exposition.
The artist noted at the time:
I didn't do it just as a historical thing, but because I believe these
things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have a physical slavery, but
an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the
people today, could conquer their slavery, we certainly can do the same thing.
