Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) made his breakthrough in 1941 with his iconic series of paintings entitled ‘The Great Migration’. Comprising 60 panels, it tells the story of the mass migration of the Black population from the southern United States to the north. Lawrence would continue to focus on African-American history throughout his career. In the later years of the Harlem Renaissance, he developed his own autonomous painting style – an expressive sort of collage cubism – to convey powerful messages. He is now considered a giant of 20th-century American painting. This book appears with the first retrospective exhibition in Europe of works by Lawrence.