Ben Shahn valued individuality and nonconformity in his art. He thought of himself as two separate but connected entities: a creative producer and an inner critic that served as his guiding factor to create personal art. To express the impact of the inner critic on his work, Shahn reflects on his evolution as an artist in his book, The Shape of Content. He writes, “The personality is an axis which gives its radial direction to everything which issues from it” (Shahn, 1957, 105). Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Shahn produced landscapes and portraits during a post-impressionist phase inspired by the School of Paris. Such work is exemplified in Shahn’s painting, Southwest Plains Oil Painting (1923). However, Shahn was not satisfied with his beginning work due to its professional appearance, facture, and the lack of inspiration from his lithography training. To express his dissatisfaction, Shahn asked himself, “This may be art, but it is my own art?” It was because of this that Shahn initially shifted to social realism and later to personal realism during World War II. This subsequent shift is made evident through the intense expression of sadness and the creation of universal symbols in his post-WWII works that showcase his relationship with the outside world. The social and political critique he generated in his later works focused on the various concerns ranging from the emptiness caused by war to the threat of nuclear disaster, a concept represented in Kuboyama (1961). This display of spiritual symbolism gains significance because Shahn’s art constructed a deeper meaning that made a case for individual expression and spoke to mankind.

In 1958, the year following the publication of the The Shape of Content, Ben Shahn created a series of three serigraphs titled Portrait of Sacco and Vanzetti. These prints addressed domestic issues, including the oppression of leftists and immigrants, to inspire reform in the United States. This holds significance because although Shahn painted in a personal realist style late into his career, his revisitation of the Sacco and Vanzetti theme represented an ongoing theme in his art: the political repercussions caused by American trials. Sharing his thoughts about the perseverance of social and political injustices in American life, Shahn’s remarked, “I hate injustice… and I hope I go on hating it all my life.” This strong sentiment and sympathy for mankind is what propelled Shahn to take on social and political work, which inspired him to communicate messages through personal art. The significance of these serigraphs lies in the constructed parallel between the ideas in Shahn’s book and his ideas during the late fifties. They exhibit the individualized style that Shahn emerged over several decades that allowed him to effectively reach his viewers. Presenting Sacco and Vanzetti as everyday Americans, Shahn solidifying their beliefs about the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, an example of two martyrs. Expanding on this idea and his success as an artist, The New York Times writer Michael Kimmelman writes, “I suspect that he is the last American artist to have bridged the gap between public taste and the taste of art critics so successfully” (Kimmelman, 1998). By portraying universal experiences, like oppression and tragedy, Shahn’s caricatures and spiritual symbolism exposed both the lack of heroism in American life and new concepts of truth to help his viewers discover their inner values.