Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Jacob Lawrence became known for his narrative series of tempera paintings expressive of his own life and that of his black peers who migrated from the South to the North. His vivid collage-appearing canvases typically had bold planes of color and symbolic elements of African-American heritage of struggles, aspirations, and accomplishments.

Lawrence's style was wide ranging, but he was most associated with narrative Synthetic Cubism whose popularity and uniqueness were suppressed by the advent of Abstract Expressionism. His major work, The Migration of the Negro, was a social-realist culmination of the art of the 1930s and not a harbinger of new styles.

He was born...