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Rembrandt Etchings. This year will be a proudly public one for Shahn. In addition to the California show, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is staging an exhibit of his graphics in November. This month, he completes a large, mosaic mural version of his Sacco-Vanzetti series at the University of Syracuse. He still contributes posters to such causes as S.N.C.C., and he sells every painting he producesat prices ranging up to $15,000 apiece. Shahn's home is in Roosevelt, N.J., a community founded in the 1930s as a New Deal relocation center for unemployed garment workers. Commissioned by the Government to do a mural for the local school, he became so attached to the town that he took a bungalow there. Today his house, set in 80 acres of community woodlands, is chockablock with Rembrandt etchings, Hindu gouaches and pre-Columbian sculpture. Noticeably thinner after a heart attack last winter, Shahn nevertheless still drives his Mercedes into Manhattan to wander through the streets of his boyhood, spent in Chinatown, the Lower East Side and Little Italy. "I'm not much for museums or galleries," he says. "If the painting is good, I'm jealous. If it's bad, I'm bored." When it comes to art, he prefers his own studio, where he is forever experimenting with tempera, watercolor, glass and inks. "I try to use the medium that suits that particular thing at that particular time," he explains. "I like to use a bastard medium. I am a pro, you know, and I turn to anything at will."
