BLACK ART AUCTION May 22, 2021 at 12pm EST Preview Catalog
BLACK ART AUCTION May 22, 2021 at 12pm EST We are pleased to present our May 22nd preview catalog in its final form. The purpose of this catalog is to share with you images and descriptions of the artwork included in the sale, along with some information about each artist, and whenever possible, a picture of the artist. We have included pre-sale estimates for each work. This catalog is presented in alphabetical order of the spelling of the artist’s name—lot numbers are not provided. On May 8th, we will upload the “functional” catalog to our website and app, and at that time it will be in lot order and you may commence bidding! We strongly encourage you to bid (live or absentee) through our platform because it is the most cost-effective, saving you 5% in buyer’s fees. That said, we know some of you are more accustomed to bidding on Invaluable or LiveAuctioneers , and those will also be available. You may also telephone bid. Just call or email us and we will arrange that for you. If you are feeling adventurous, you may even do both—telephone bid on your favorites, but follow along on the internet in case a bargain arises or you-know-who is taking a nap. There are some amazing last minute additions to the auction, and we are certain you will be as excited to see them as we are. If you have any questions regarding a particular work or the mechanics of bidding, please do not hesitate to contact us. Be sure to download our app (available wherever you get your apps or on our website) to get easy access to all stuff and general going-ons, plus you may use it to bid live in our auctions. We are located at 1497 N. Harding Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202. Front cover: Bisa Butler, Untitled (Stevie Wonder) Front inside cover: Barkley Hendricks, Bermuda Sunshine Back inside cover: Barbara Johnson Zuber, Cotton Needs Picking, Lawd, Lawd Back cover: William Majors, Untitled New York Series To download this catalog as a PDF, click the downward facing arrow at the top left corner of the box that encloses the catalog.
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RON ADAMS (b. 1934) Adams studied at the Otis Art Institute, U.C.L.A., and the University of Mexico. Ron Adams enthusiasm for drawing the human figure is matched only by his reverence for technical excellence in whatever medium he might be working. Adam’s, formerly a master printer at Gemini G.E.L., opened the Hand Graphics Atelier in 1974. He collaborated on both lithographs and etchings with artists such as Charles White, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, John Biggers, Judy Chicago, Luis Jimenez and many others. He retired from printing, and sold Hand Graphics to Michael Costello in 1987, in order to focus on his own artistic career. Solo and group exhibitions include ClineLewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Stables Art Gallery, Taos, NM; Downey Museum of Art, Downey, CA. His work is in the collections of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; the Museum of Afro-American Culture, Dallas, TX; Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM; the Hampton University Museum, Hampton VA; the Taylor
Museum, Hampton, VA; The Museum of Fine Art, Albuquerque, NM; the Little Rock Fine Art Center, Little Rock, AK; and the Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY, as well as numerous private collections. (REF: https://www.handgraphicsllc.com ) Photo: Black Artists on Art, v. 1, Lewis/ Waddy, p. 99.
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Blackburn, 2002
7 color lithograph on BFK Rives 26 x 35 3/4 inches (image) signed, dated, and numbered, 33/80 in pencil This image depicts Bob Blackburn, working at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $2,000-3,000
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WILLIAM ANDERSON (b. 1932) I want poverty to be seen…I’m trying to send a message. I can’t do it in the pulpit. It’s the only way I know how. William Anderson was born in Selma, Alabama, studied sculpture at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico (MFA, 1968). Disappointed in the way other people photographed his sculptures, he began taking the pictures himself, and eventually transitioned into a career in photography. His work is focused on documenting the African American experience in the South. His photography is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the High Museum, Atlanta. He served as a professor at Morehouse University for many years and was chairman of the art department. This image is illustrated in Rural Symphonies in Black and White, The Photography of William Anderson, Jr., Shonda Buchanan, International Review of African American Art, v. 22, no. 2. p. 53.
Man Shaving, 1978 silver gelatin print 13 x 9 inches $1,500-2,500
BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006) Born in Madison, Georgia, the son of sharecroppers, Benny Andrews studied at Fort Valley State College (1948-50). After serving in the Korean War with the United States Air Force, he attended the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (1954-58), studying with Jack Levine and Boris Margo. He was generally viewed as an outsider, unyielding to the trends of abstraction at the time he was developing at the Art Institute. His work focused on figurative social commentary depicting the struggles, atrocities, and everyday occurrences in the world, especially in the African American community. In his drawings, paintings, and collages, Andrews continued to pursue representational art, which has been his focus throughout his long career. “Benny Andrews is a remarkable draftsman whose work is characterized by great economy of means,” Patricia P. Bladon wrote in Folk: The Art of Benny and George Andrews. “He infuses his drawings with the same integrity and passion which characterize his large-scale paintings.” As his career flourished he continued to speak out on the inequalities facing African American artists and helped found the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition with fellow artist Cliff Joseph. He spent 29 years teaching art at Queens College and served as the Director of the Visual Arts program, a division of the National Endowment for the Arts (1982-84). His work received both critical praise and commercial acceptance. Elected to the National Academy of Design in 1977, he was awarded premier fellowships and exhibited widely in this
country and abroad. Today, his work is found in the collection of many major museums, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Detroit Institute of Art; Morris Museum of Art, GA; Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C.; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Most recently, his work was featured in the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.
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Woman, c. 1963
oil and collage on canvas 15 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches signed and dated; signed, titled, and dated verso artist-made frame Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $5,000-7,000
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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006)
Turtle Dove, 1980
color lithograph 30 x 22 1/4 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 70/275 in pencil $800-1,200
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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006)
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MASON ARCHIE (active, Indianapolis, IN) Mason Archie was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. He began his career as a sign painter, but experimented with realism in his spare time. There was a rich tradition of landscape painting in the eastern half of the state of Indiana to the Ohio border. The Hoosier Group painters (T.C. Steele, Otto Stark, William Forsyth, Richard Gruelle, and John Ottis Adams) along with the talented artists of the “Richmond Group” (painters such as J.E. Bundy and George Baker in Richmond, Indiana, which is located on the Ohio border not far from Dayton) who were active from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century would have been a major influence. While all of these painters were Impressionists, they frequently leaned toward luminism in their style, which is a relevant comparison to this work. Archie was the 2007 recipient of the Creative Renewal Fellowship from The Art Council of Indianapolis/Lilly Endowment and a perennial award winner from 2007-2009 in the Hoosier Salon's Annual Juried Exhibit, one of the oldest competitions in the country. His works are in the collections of the Indiana State Museum, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African
American Art, Nationwide Corporation, Wells Fargo, Elanco, Division of Eli Lilly, Eskenazi Health, Community South Hospital, and a host of private collections around the country. His professional affiliations include the Oil Painters of America, Hoosier Salon Patron Association and Fine Arts Gallery, Portrait Society of America, International Guild of Realism, African-American Visual Artist Guild, and the Dayton Visual Artist Center.
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Heaven's Gate II, 2008 oil on canvas 24 x 18 inches signed, titled and dated
Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $4,000-6,000
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MASON ARCHIE (active, Indianapolis, IN)
Wildflowers at Big Sur, 2006 oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches signed, dated, titled
Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $6,000-8,000
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MASON ARCHIE (active, Indianapolis, IN)
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RALPH ARNOLD (1928-2006) Artist and educator, Ralph Arnold, is best known for his masterful collages and assemblages which he began making in the early 1960’s. The theme of gender and its role in social and individual identity appears frequently in Arnold’s work. Arnold was born in 1928 and raised both in Knoxville, Tennessee and Chicago. His interest in art began as a teen at Blue Island High School (now Dwight D. Eisenhower High School) in Chicago where he worked in the print shop. Here he was exposed to printmaking and working with paper. Arnold briefly attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign but left to serve in the army in Korea. When he returned to Chicago, he received his BFA from Roosevelt University. He also attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his MFA. He began working as an educator in the 60’s. Arnold taught at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Rockford College, Rockford, IL; Barat College, Lake Forest, IL; and Loyola University, Chicago, where he served as the chairman of the Fine Arts department. During his career he was represented by Benjamin Galleries from 1964-1969, Gilman Galleries, and Van Straaten Gallery, all in Chicago, which held solo exhibitions in their respective spaces. Other solo shows included Some Old, Some New, South Side Community Art Center, 1973; The Real and Abstract: The Art of Ralph Arnold, Chicago State University,1982; and Ralph Arnold Unmasked: From Pop to Political, Loyola University, 2012, among many others. His work was featured in the group exhibitions: Afro-American Artists, 1800-1969, School District and Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center, PA, 1969; Directions in Afro-American Art, Cornell University, NY, 1974; Black
American Artists/71, Illinois Bell Gallery, Chicago, 1971; Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, 1971; and Violence in Recent American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1968. In 2018, the exhibition The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity, and Politics was held at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago. His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Fisk University,TN; and DePaul University, Chicago. In 2006, the Ralph Arnold Gallery was established at Loyola as a part exhibition/part workspace in tribute to his advocacy for the arts. Arnold produced a series of works with a T.V. theme, creating an abstract composition with the letters and “filling the letters with wavy lines that he found so beguiling when the television was off focus . Building on his earlier interest in hidden signifiers and continuing his fascination with the role of mass media in shaping public opinion, the T.V. Series uses what initially seems like formally rigorous and entirely abstract art to simultaneously comment on the role of television in daily life.” (REF: The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold, Art, Identity, and Politics, Greg Foster-Rice, p. 43.)
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Untitled, c.1970 collage on board 15 x 17 inches signed $2,000-3,000
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ELLEN BANKS (1938-2017) Well versed in both classical piano and visual art, Ellen Banks made the decision to pursue visual art at the Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where she received her B.A. and M.F.A. respectively. Banks broke boundaries with her formal geometric abstractions. She studied with Hans Jaffe and César Domela, both of whom had close ties to Mondrian and the DeStijl group. Banks became the first black woman professor of painting at her alma mater, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. One of her earliest solo exhibitions was held at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA in 1973. She was the first black woman artist to be shown at the venue. In the mid-80’s, Banks began to incorporate the classical musical themes into her nonobjective abstract works. She brought form to musical works as varied as Scott Joplin’s ragtime compositions, Bach’s toccatas, and Chopin’s Nocturnes. Banks’ work has been shown in such seminal exhibitions as Afro-American Artists, NY and Boston, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1970; Blacks: USA: 1973, New York Cultural Center; Massachusetts Masters: Afro
American Artists, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1988; Black NY Artists of the 20th Century: Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY, 1999, and Abstract and All That: Selected Works from the Paul R. Jones Collection, University of Delaware, 2005. Photo: Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, King-Hammond,
1995, p.9.
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Figure on a Beach Blanket, c. 1970 textured oil on masonite 25 x 40 inches signed; titled verso and signed again $3,000-5,000
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EDWARD BANNISTER (1828-1901) Edward Bannister is one of the first African American artists to achieve recognition in the United States during his lifetime. His tonalist paintings reflect a considerable influence from the Barbizon school in subject matter and technique. Bannister painted nature with such reverence that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to state that he may have also been influenced by the modern Transcendentalist themes of nature and spirituality that were prevalent in the northeastern United States at the time. Originally from Canada, Bannister settled in Boston at the age of 20 and studied at the Lowell Institute with William Rimmer. He eventually moved to Providence, Rhode Island with his wife, Christiana Cartreaux, a Narragansett Indian. In 1876, his painting, Under the Oaks won first prize at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and caused considerable disruption. Bannister emerged with his title upheld and career as a serious artist firmly established. Bannister co-founded the Providence Art Club and continued to paint with considerable community support. He was the only major African-American artist of the late nineteenth century who developed his talents without the benefit of European exposure. REF: Free within Ourselves: African-American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in Association with Pomegranate Art Books, 1992)
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Expansive Landscape, c. 1880 watercolor on board 7 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches signed $2,750-3,250
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Barthé and Jacob Lawrence registering at the Contemporary Negro Art exhibition, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1939
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989) Barthé was born in Bay St Louis, Mississippi. He left in 1924, headed for Chicago to study at the Art Institute. It wasn’t until Richmond Barthé’s senior year there that he was introduced to sculpting--in an effort to improve his skill at fleshing out three dimensional forms on canvas. A bust completed in his introductory class was included in the Art Institute’s juried exhibition, The Negro in Art, in 1927. This led to commissions for busts of Henry O. Tanner and Toussaint L’Ouverture. He had been awarded two Rosenwald Fellowships in 1929 and 1930, and so after graduation, he moved to New York, focused on establishing himself as a sculptor, set up a studio in Harlem, and continued studying at the Art Student’s League. Both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased sculptures for their permanent collections. Throughout his career he created intimate portrait busts, large scale public commissions,
and studies of the human figure. His work may be found in the public collections of Fisk University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In a review of his first solo exhibition, Edward Alden Jewell, art critic for the New York Times commented, Richmond Barthé penetrates far beneath the surface, honestly seeking essentials, and never after finding these essentials, stooping to polish off an interpretation with superficial allure. There is no cleverness, no slickness in this sculpture. Some of the readings deserve, indeed, to be called profound.
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)
Catalog note: The works African Boy Dancing and Birth of Spirituals come from the collection of Jerry Manpearl and Jan Goodman, Los Angeles. Mr. Manpearl is a real estate, civil rights, and civil litigation lawyer in the state of California. He received his B.A. from UC Berkeley and then his law degree at UCLA, where he met artists Samella Lewis, Ruth Waddy, and E.J. Montgomery. Samella Lewis first arrived in Southern California in 1966 and took a position teaching at Cal State Long Beach. Two years later, she began working for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a coordinator of education, but she became disenfranchised with the institution and set out on her own, planning a combination of ambitious projects that would help change the landscape of African American art in the region. First, she and Ruth Waddy published two books, Black Artists on Art (2 volumes, in 1969 and 1971). These books help connect working black artists across the country as well as familiarize the public with their work. Secondly, she formed the Museum of African American Art, now located at 4005 Crenshaw Blvd, in the Macy’s Building, Los Angeles, CA. Lewis
opened a place called The Gallery on Redondo Blvd, and with the moral and financial support of her sister Millie, and a small group of friends, they opened the museum. The group was operating on a shoestring, and leaned on their friend, Jerry Manpearl, to act as their lawyer to help with these projects. The year was 1976, the same year Richmond Barthé arrived in Pasadena, with the entirety of his personal belongings: a television and a modeling table. Charles White and his wife had found him a small apartment. Barthé was an acquaintance of the actor/director Ivan Dixon, and Dixon introduced his friend to Samella Lewis shortly after his [Barthé’s] arrival in L.A. Two years later (1978), Dixon introduced Barthé to a co-worker, Nanette Turner, who decided to interview him and submit an article to the Inner City Cultural Center, who published a multicultural magazine of the arts. Dixon was directing an episode of the television show, The Rockford Files, and upon hearing the story of Barthé and reading the article, actor James Garner (the star of the show), requested a meeting with the artist.
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)
Barthé was involved in an issue of possible copyright infringement, as a collector wanted to reproduce two of his images—seemingly without permission. Within the circle of acquaintances, Jerry Manpearl was contacted to help the artist. Manpearl aided Barthé in properly copyrighting his images so they would not fall into the public domain, and set up a trust to protect the accounts of the artist. The trio of Lewis, Garner, and Manpearl turned the elderly artist’s life around. Once copyrighted, Garner funded the casting of editions of Barthé’s sculptures, under the supervision of the artist. The revenue from these sculptures, supplemented by financial support from Garner (Mr. Manpearl, stated in an interview that Garner put Barthé on his payroll for the remainder of the artist’s life) provided support for the artist.
Barthé celebrated his 81st birthday in 1982 on the set of The Rockford Files, and five years later, in 1987, The Museum of African American Art honored Barthé for his achievements in the art world. Jerry Manpearl is the co-founder of the Paul Robeson Community Wellness Center in Los Angeles and President of the Southern California World Trade Association. He clerked for the Chief Justice of the California Courts of Appeal. Through his interest in the visual arts, Manpearl has lent his services to many artists, including Elizabeth Catlett and Samella Lewis, both of whom, like Barthé, are represented in his collection.
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)
African Boy Dancing, 1986, conceived 1937 bronze 16 1/2 inches (sculpture) 5 1/4 inches (diameter, bronze base) 6 x 6 x 1 3/4 inches (marble base) signed and dated 86, AP
Illustrated: Barthé, His Life in Art, Lewis, p.68 $20,000-30,000
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)
Birth of Spirituals, 1986, conceived 1941 bronze 12 x 11 1/2 x 5 inches (bronze) 12 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 3 inches (marble base)
Illustrated: Barthé, His Life in Art, Lewis, p.196 $40,000-60,000
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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)
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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Romare Bearden was born in 1912 in Charlotte, North Carolina, but raised largely in New York City. His parents were active participants in the Harlem Renaissance, (his mother was the New York editor of the Chicago Defender), which provided the artistic and intellectual foundation for him to emerge as an artist of genuine talent, versatility, and conviction. Bearden studied at New York University, the Art Students League with George Grosz, and Columbia University. He was involved with the earliest incarnation of the Harlem Artists Guild and Charles Alston’s 306 group. After serving with the army, he was able to travel to Paris and study at the Sorbonne. When he returned from his travel, his work became more abstract. His early Social Realist works gradually gave way to cubism in the mid 1940’s while he began exploring religious and mythological themes. In the early 1960’s, Bearden joined the artist collective Spiral. He began making collages as “an attempt to redefine the image of man in terms of the black experience.” Bearden’s early collages were composed primarily of magazine and newspaper cuttings. Together with his Projections, which were enlarged photostatic copies of these collages, they mark a turning point in his career and received critical praise. Bearden achieved success in a wide array of media and techniques, including watercolor, gouache, oil, drawing, monotype, and edition prints. He also made designs for record albums, costumes and stage sets, and book illustrations. Bearden opened Cinque Gallery
with fellow artists Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow and was founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. His work is included in major public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. Recent exhibitions of his work include: Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary, showing from January 30, 2020 - May 1, 2020 at the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland College Park, MD; Abstract Romare Bearden, February 13, 2020 - March 28, 2020, DC Moore Gallery, NY; and Something Over Something Else: Romare Bearden’s Profile Series, February 28, 2020 –May 24, 2020, Cincinnati Art Museum. His work is also part of the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983.
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The Lantern, 1979
lithograph on paper 23 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches (image) 28 1/2 x 19 7/8 inches (sheet) signed and numbered in pencil GG #89 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $5,000-7,000
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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)
Two Women, 1981-82
color serigraph 23 x 14 1/4 inches (image) 26 1/2 x 17 1/4 inches (sheet) signed , titled, and numbered in pencil GG#108 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $3,000-5,000
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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)
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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)
Conjunction (Island Paradise), 1979
color lithograph 18 7/8 x 15 inches (image) 28 1/8 x 21 inches (sheet) signed, dated, and numbered 113/300 in pencil $2,500-4,500
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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)
Mother and Child, 1980
serigraph on paper 25 3/4 x 15 inches (image size) 29 1/2 x 18 7/8 inches (sheet size) signed, HC (artist's proof) in pencil Illustrated: A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, Gail Gelburd, GG#102 (62), p. 116 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $3,000-5,000
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001) Born in North Carolina in 1924, John Biggers’ body of work experienced a constant evolution throughout his career. He was an accomplished draftsmen as well as muralist adept at weaving southern African-American and African culture together - incorporating sacred geometry and complex symbolic elements. Biggers attended Hampton Institute (University) in the early 1940s, and befriended Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett. Much of his early work was social realist - depicting the everyday hard work and perseverance of the African American community. In 1949, Biggers moved to Houston, TX and chaired the art department at Texas State University (later Texas Southern). The artist yearned to penetrate the invisible but very real curtain which seemed to separate American blacks from Africans. For 15 years, he tried and failed to get fellowships to Africa. Finally he made it in 1957, on a UNESCO grant which provided seven months of living and traveling through Ghana and western Nigeria. “I had a magnificent sense of coming home, of belonging,” he says - and he doesn’t mean it sentimentally.
Biggers asserts. The sight of African men and women building their own houses, hewing and shaping their own ax handles, weaving their own quilts, making their own chairs, impressed him deeply. “And it reminded me of my own childhood times in North Carolina.” -Ann Holmes, It is Almost Genetic, The ARTGallery Magazine, April 1970, p. 38. Biggers’ work may be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Atlanta University, GA; Barnett-Aden Collection, Washington D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Howard University, Washington D.C.; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
“I recognized at once the Africanisms in our life in America, which we simply had not been able to recognize and to claim,”
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The Seed, 1983
lithograph on Arches rag paper 32 x 36-1/2 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered AP VIII from the illustration for Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, 1966 Literature: A Life on Paper: The Drawings and Lithographs of John Thomas Biggers, Olive Jensen Theisen, 2006; p. 66. $3,000-5,000
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)
Family Ark, 1992
color offset lithograph triptych 29-3/8 x 13-15/16 inches (left panel, image/sheet) 29-3/8 x 21-9/16 inches (center panel, image/sheet) 29-3/8 x 13-15/16 inches (right panel, image/sheet) Signed in the plate (in pencil), right panel; numbered in plate (in pencil) 77/100 left panel $4,000-6,000
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)
Untitled, Family, c. 1990 mixed media on paper 9 3/4 x 6 inches unsigned
Provenance: The artist to Eugene Foney (a friend of the artist, Houston); to Samuel's Gallery, Oakland, CA, to Joysmith Gallery, Memphis (2006), to private collection, Los Angeles, CA. $4,000-6,000
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)
Three Children, 1983
lithograph 23 x 15 inches signed, dated, with "Artist's Proof VIII" in pencil $2,500-3,500
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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)
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BENJAMIN BRITT (b. 1923) Benjamin Britt studied with Samuel Joseph Brown in Philadelphia in the early 1940s and continued his education at the Art Students League in New York City. In New York, he met Salvador Dali, and Surrealism would become a recurring theme in his works thereafter. Britt’s work includes a variety of subject matter, but he was foremost a figurative painter, placing the human figure in drastically different settings from traditional African motifs to surrealist scenes of fantasy. His work is in the collection of the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, and may be seen in the book, In Search of Missing Masters: The Lewis Tanner Moore Collection of African American Art (2008). The artist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, April 2, 1967
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The Maze, 1973
oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches signed label verso: Rittenhouse Square, Clothesline Exhibit $2,500-3,500
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BENJAMIN BRITT (b. 1923)
Dawn, c. 1970
oil on board 20 x 30 inches signed signed, titled, and inscribed, "Phila PA" verso $4,000-6,000
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BENJAMIN BRITT (b. 1923)
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SYLVESTER BRITTON (1926-2009) Sylvester Britton was born in 1926 on the South Side of Chicago. He attended the Abraham Lincoln Center, a cultural center in Chicago, and received formal art training in Mexico City at the School of Painting and Sculpture. When Britton returned to Chicago, he studied at the School of the Art Institute. He later traveled to Europe, living and exhibiting work both in Paris and Sweden before earning enough money to move back to Chicago by making Christmas cards. When he returned to the United States, he was instrumental in the revival of the South Side Community Art Center and became its gallery director. He was also a regular exhibitor at the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago. Britton exhibited works at Oak Park Library, Chicago, IL; Atlanta University; Art Institute of Chicago; and the South Side Community Art Center. He was awarded the Eisendrath Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1956. Most recently, in 2018, the Smart Museum,
Chicago, IL, included his work in the exhibition, The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side 1960-1980. Illustrations of his work appear in the catalog on pages 72 and 139. His work is also illustrated in The Black Chicago Renaissance by Darlene Clark Hine and John McCluskey, Jr., University of Illinois Press, 2012, cat #10:28 and 10:29.
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Abstract Mask, c. 1975 oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches signed $3,000-5,000
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GRAFTON TYLER BROWN (1841-1918) Grafton Tyler Brown was a painter, graphic designer, and lithographer who worked in California in the late 19th century. Brown worked in Peter S. Duval’s print shop in Philadelphia in the 1850s. By 1865, he had founded his own lithography business in San Francisco, designing stock certificates for a wide variety of companies ranging from ice to mining corporations, as well as admission tickets, maps, sheet music and advertisements. In the 1870s, Brown moved to Victoria, British Columbia to work on a geographical survey for the Canadian government. He held his first exhibition of paintings in 1883 in Victoria, which included 22 local landscapes. Brown lived in Portland from 1886-1889 and Wyoming in 1891, before returning to California, all the while painting the local scenery. In 1892, he left the West and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he worked as a draftsman and civil engineer. Brown lived out his remaining 25 years in St. Paul, Minnesota. Right: The artist at work in his studio; Collection of British Columbia Archives and Records Service.
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Menlo Park Hotel, lot of four lithographs, all hand-colored
Menlo Park Hotel, Menlo Park, San Mateo Co. California, M. Kuck, Proprietor; 30 Miles from San Francisco, 9 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches (image) Moore & De Pue , publisher, with: Residence and Ranch of John Butt, Purissima, San Mateo County, California, 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, image; E.A. Husing, Dealer in Groceries..., 9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches, image; Ranch and Residence of Michael Casey, Canada, Ramonda, San Mateo County, California, 9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches, image $2,000-3,000
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GRAFTON TYLER BROWN (1841-1918)
Lot of five mining stock certificates, including Cocos Island, Constitution Mining Company, Cornucopia Consolidated, General Lee Silver Mining Company, and Commission Strip lithography on paper largest 5 x 9 1/4 inches REF: San Francisco Lithographer, African American Artist Grafton Tyler Brown, Robert Chandler $1,000-2,000
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GRAFTON TYLER BROWN (1841-1918)
Residence of James W. Bell, lot of
four lithographs, all hand-colored, 1878 12 1/4 x 25 3/4 inches (image) Moore & De Pue, publisher. with: Residence of Alfred Fay, Redwood TSP., San Mateo County, California (9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, image); Kreis’s Pioneer Brewery. Redwood City, San Mateo County, California (9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches, image); Property of J. Kentfield, Redwood City. San Mateo County, California (9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches, image).
San Francisco Lithographer, African American Artist Grafton Tyler Brown by Robert J. Chandler (2014), p. 148. $2,000-3,000
Kreis’s Pioneer Brewery is illustrated in
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MARVIN PRENTISS BROWN (b. 1943) Abstract painter and printmaker Marvin Prentiss Brown was born in Queens, NY in 1943. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School as well as the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and Indiana University School of Fine Arts. His work has been featured in important exhibitions such as Contextures, Just Above Midtown Gallery, NY, 1978; Untitled I, Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1971; Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1971; Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1970; and Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936-1996, Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, CUNY. He was also included in the article, Black Art in America, written by Barbara Rose for Art in America and published in 1970.
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Coote's Coote, 1972
polymer emulsion on vinyl 16 x 16 1/4 inches identified label verso: Daniel Weinberg Gallery titled and dated verso $2,000-3,000
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MARVIN PRENTISS BROWN (b.1943)
Partial Lift, n.d.
lithograph 30 x 22 inches signed, titled, and numbered 3/10 in pencil $1,000-2,000
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MARVIN PRENTISS BROWN (b.1943)
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CALVIN BURNETT (1921-2007) Calvin Burnett was a Boston-based painter and printmaker. He earned degrees from the Massachusetts College of Art and at Boston University (he also eventually taught at the former for 30 years). His early career centered on printmaking and commercial art, but he experimented with nearly all possible mediums, subjects, and styles over the course of his career. Burnett worked on paintings for a considerable time, often on several at once. In 1997 he was forced to quit painting after developing glaucoma.
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Figure + Tower, 1948
watercolor 21 x 27 inches signed; titled and dated verso $2,500-3,500
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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010) In her dedication to educating others and advocating for African American art, Margaret Burroughs became a cultural leader and role model. Born in St. Rose, Louisiana in 1917, Burroughs and her family followed the Great Migration north to Chicago in 1922. She made the most of many valuable opportunities throughout her lifetime, beginning at Englewood High School, where she first became interested in art, and became the youngest member of George Neal’s Art Crafts Guild. She later studied at the Chicago Normal School. At age 22, she founded the South Side Community Art Center, a community organization that continues to serve as a gallery and workshop studio for artists and students. In the early 1950’s, Burroughs started the Lake Meadows Art Fair where African Americans could showcase and sell their art. Burroughs lived in Mexico for a time, where she studied print making and mural painting with the Taller Editorial de Grafica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop) under Leopoldo Mendez, a prominent printmaker of the Diego Rivera circle. When she returned to the States, she and her husband Charles founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in their living room. It remained there for nearly a decade until it moved to its own building in Chicago’s Washington Park. Burroughs was also an accomplished poet
and author of children’s books. In 1975 she received the President’s Humanitarian Award, and in 1977 was distinguished as one of Chicago’s Most Influential Women by the Chicago Defender. February 1, 1986 was proclaimed “Dr. Margaret Burroughs Day” in Chicago by late Mayor Harold Washington. Burroughs passed away on November 21, 2010. In 2018, the exhibitions The Art and Influence of Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs and The Time Is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980, were presented concurrently; the former at her beloved museum, and the latter at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. The book South Side Venus: The Legacy of Margaret Burroughs by Mary Ann Cain was also published. Together they provide a closer look at the life and legacy of this remarkable woman who continues to inspire generations.
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Woman, 1984
lithograph 17 x 12 1/4 inches signed, titled, dated 11/4/84, and numbered 15/21 $600-800
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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)
Emma Lazarus, c. 1955
linocut print 11 7/8 x 7 7/8 inches (image) signed and titled in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,000-1,500
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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)
Marian Anderson, 1956 woodblock print 11 3/4 x 9 inches (image) signed and titled in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,500-2,000
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BISA BUTLER (b. 1973) Butler graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting, but in an interview in Create! magazine she stated she never really connected with the medium. It was while completing her masters degree at Montclair State University that she took a Fiber Arts class that inspired her choice of quilting as an artistic medium. While Butler’s quilts are decidedly contemporary her work is rooted in the past. She learned to sew from her mother and grandmother and her influences are varied - from Romare Bearden’s collages to the photographs of Gordon Parks to the philosophies of ArfriCOBRA.
and curator, stated “Butler is elevating the status of her subjects by making portraits, and also elevating quilting - which is an African American craft tradition - by adding portraiture to it.” (Smithsonian Magazine, July 2020) Butler is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the National Museum for African American History and Culture, and many others.
Butler’s portraits are often based on found black-and-white photographs and the subjects range from the anonymous to the famous. Glenn Adamson, an independent craft scholar
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Untitled, Stevie Wonder, c. 2005-2006 quilt; dyed cotton with appliqué 20 x 25 1/2 inches signed with stitch in image $10,000-20,000
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BISA BUTLER (b. 1973)
Untitled, Woman, c. 2005-2006 quilt; dyed cotton with appliqué 44 3/4 x 36 inches signed with stitch in image $20,000-30,000
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WILLIAM CARTER (1909-1996) William Sylvester Carter was born in St. Louis, MO and moved to Chicago in 1930 to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois. In order to earn room and board, Carter worked as a janitor at the Palette and Chisel Club (an all-white club, to which he became an honorary member in 1986). He was among the artists represented in the American Negro Exposition assembled by Alonzo Aden, with the Harmon Foundation and the WPA in Chicago, 1940. Carter was awarded first prize for a work in watercolor. The same year, he exhibited at Howard University Gallery of Art. Carter also worked for the WPA in Illinois in 1943, and taught art at the historic South Side Community Art Center. Carter worked in many styles and addressed virtually any subject matter from the traditional portrait to completely non-objective compositions. Although Carter humorously and vehemently vowed until the day he died (at 87) he was too young to have a painting style, this colorful, cubist-influenced work is a fine example of a style in which he worked regularly. Carter’s work, The Card Game, 1950, was included in the exhibition, They Seek A City, Chicago and the Art of Migration (p.87) which was held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013.
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Untitled, Cubist Figures, c. 1960 oil on masonite 24 x 20 inches signed $2,500-4,500
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MITCHELL CATON (1930-1998) Theodore Burns Mitchell, later known to most people as Mitchell Caton, was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but relocated to Chicago as a young boy. He attended DuSable High School, and according to his son, Tyler Mitchell, was awarded a commission shortly after graduation to paint Sanders McMath, then governor of Arkansas. That commission led to an art scholarship at the University of Little Rock. Caton studied at the Art Students League in New York and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well. He settled in Chicago, was married in 1955, and worked as a mail sorter through the 1960s in the downtown Chicago post office, where he met Bill Walker. In 1967, Walker participated in a project related to the Organization for Black American Culture, which was a community mural honoring African American heroes, known as the Wall of Respect. Two years later, Caton was one of a group of artists who repainted the outdoor mural. Walker and Caton were involved in the insurgent Chicago Mural Group (now known as the Chicago Public Art Group) with fellow artists, John Pitman Weber and Eugene Eda. Caton quit his post office job to focus on his art. Around the same time, Caton frequented a place known as Universal Alley, a backstreet near 50th and Saint Lawrence, where large groups of people came together every Sunday to throw dice and listen to jazz. Caton painted his first solo mural here, Rip-Off, which depicted a pair of dice and figures being held up. He later extended the mural, renaming it Universal Alley. He executed numerous
outdoor and indoor murals, solo and jointly, with artists from the Chicago Mural Group such as Bill Walker and Calvin Jones. Caton’s slick visual style, with figures emerging from backgrounds of planes and colors, melding abstract design with narrative elements, was highly successful. Perhaps Caton’s most well-known collaboration is Wall of Daydreaming/Man’s Inhumanity to Man, a two section mural at the corner of 47th Street and Calumet (Chicago), painted with Bill Walker, Santi Isrowuthalkul, and John Pitman Weber. Photo: Black Artist on Art, v. 2, Lewis/Waddy, p. 122
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Untitled, c. 1970
oil on canvas 19 1/2 x 35 inches signed $5,000-7,000
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MITCHELL CATON (1930-1998)
Untitled, Guitar Player, 1968 oil on board 16 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches signed and dated $5,000-7,000
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MITCHELL CATON (1930-1998)
Untitled, African Theme, c. 1970
acrylic with collage elements to stretched canvas 24 x 18 inches signed $3,000-5,000
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Elizabeth Catlett was born in Washington D.C. She attended Howard University where she studied design, printmaking and drawing. She continued her graduate work at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, and in 1940 became the first African American student to receive an M.F.A. in sculpture from the school. Grant Wood instilled in her the idea of working with subjects that she, the artist, knew best. She was inspired to create Mother and Child in 1939 for her thesis. This limestone sculpture won first prize in its category at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago, 1940. Eager to continue her education, she studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago (1941), lithography at the Art Students League of New York (1942-43), and independently with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York (1943). In 1946, Catlett received a Rosenwald Fellowship that allowed her to travel to Mexico City with her husband, Charles White, where she studied wood carving with Jose L. Ruiz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zuniga. There, she worked with the Taller de Grafica Popular, (People’s Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of printmakers dedicated to using their art to promote social change. The TGP inspired her to reach out to the broadest possible audience, which often meant balancing abstraction
with figuration. After settling in Mexico and later becoming a Mexican citizen, she taught sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City until retiring in 1975. Catlett’s work has exhibited widely (most recently The Art of Elizabeth Catlett: From the Collection of Samella Lewis was presented at the University of Delaware, Sep 3-Dec 6, 2019) and her work is found in many important collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY.
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Man, 2003
color woodblock print 19 x 12 1/2 inches signed, titled and dated Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,500-2,500
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)
Naima, c. 2000
bronze 14 x 4 1/8 x 2 3/4 inches (sculpture) base: 3 3/4 x 5 1/4 x 2 inches initialed, EC Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $10,000-15,000
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)
All the People, 1992
color lithograph from the "For My People" portfolio, Limited Editions Club, NY 15 5/8 x 13 5/8 inches (image) 22 3/4 x 18 3/4 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered, 40/99 in pencil $1,500-2,000 www.BLACKARTAUCTION.com
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)
Danys y Liethis (Mother and Child), 2005
lithograph 27 x 19 inches (image) signed, titled, dated, and numbered, 36/85 in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $2,500-3,500
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)
Lovey Twice, 1976
lithograph 15 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches signed, inscribed, To Berthe with Love, numbered, 87/100 in pencil $1,500-2,500
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)
For My People, 1992
one volume, six color lithographs (to illustrate Margaret Walker's poem) on Arches paper, and a colophon page. The book is bound in imported red Japanese linen over heavy boards, the clamshell case covered in black cotton. J.K. Fine Art Editions Co., signed by Catlett and Walker, numbered 103/400 in pencil (on colophon page). overall size of case: 23 x 19 1/2 inches Includes: Playmates, Walking Blindly, To Marry, All the People, Second Generation, Singing Their Songs. Provenance: Private collection, Dallas, TX $2,000-3,000
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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)
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RALPH CHESSÉ (1900-1991) Ralph Chessé was born in New Orleans and was primarily self-taught as an artist, with the exception of a few months study at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918. He traveled to Southern California in 1923 and eventually headed north to the Bay Area in the early 1930s, where he painted and worked as a professional puppeteer in children's theater, an activity he mastered and continued throughout his life. Chessé worked for the Public Works Art Project in 1933, contributing to the Coit Tower murals in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. His fresco reflects his work in children's theater by depicting children at play, and seems to present its characters in an almost puppet-like manner. Each child is separated in space and frozen in movement, almost as if they are posing for a picture or pretending to play. Its design was inspired by the work of early American primitive limners, who traveled the land in the years before the spread of photography. They brought along with them canvases pre-painted with bodies––headless bodies waiting for individual face portraits to be added. Chessé linked his physically isolated children by way of a gravel path that guides the eye downward from left to right through the mural and past each child at play. He continued this approach to figure painting throughout his career. Moses and the Idolators and Canaan both illustrate this concept. Although there is a narrative to each work, the image appears as a “still”, thus allowing the viewer to contemplate the scene at a desired pace. The character development is static, so betrayal is impossible, and the scene becomes symbolic, instead of a fleeting image that may have been spied out of context.
Chessé explored many styles of Modernist painting, and was strongly motivated by color. In the 1940’s, Chessé painted AfricanAmerican figures, many of them dock workers, in social-realist scenes recalling his boyhood in New Orleans. He also used religious themed motifs derived from The Bible. During World War II, he created paintings of the shipyards in the Bay Area. Later, Chessé moved to Oregon where he painted in a more abstract, but still figurative style, until his death at the age of 90. He exhibited his paintings at the Gildea Gallery and the Lucien Labaudt Gallery in San Francisco, the Duncan Gallery in New York, and the Marc Antony Gallery in New Orleans. He was a member of the San Francisco Art Association and the Oakland Art Association. His work was included in group exhibitions at the Oakland Art Gallery (now the Oakland Museum of California) and the de Young Museum. A solo exhibition of his work was mounted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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Praline Woman, 1941 oil on canvas 18 x 22 inches signed and dated
Exhibited: One Man Show , San Francisco Museum of Art; March 1, 1944 (label verso) $8,000-12,000
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CLAUDE CLARK (1915-2001) Born on a tenant farm in Georgia in 1915, Claude Clark moved to Philadelphia with his family during the Great Migration in search of better economic opportunities. Following graduation from high school, Clark attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art from 1935-1939, as well as receiving training from the Albert Barnes Foundation from 1939-1944. Clark’s early works were heavily influenced by French painters - as exemplified by his use of the palette knife to create texture and his use of heavy, dark lines to outline fluid shapes; however, his affiliation with Albert Barnes shaped his appreciation of African Art and encouraged him to concentrate on images of African Americans. Rural life in the South and the Caribbean have been recurring themes throughout his career.
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Betty, Model, 1935-1937
oil on board 16 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches signed and dated verso (this is typical for Clark) $1,500-2,500
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CLAUDE CLARK (1915-2001)
Workers, c. 1950
oil on board 24 x 20 inches signed verso (typical for the artist) Provenance: private collection, Detroit, MI $3,000-5,000
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CLAUDE CLARK (1915-2001)
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GEORGE CLINTON (B. 1941) Clinton is best known as one of the primary figures in Funk music. His Parliament-Funkadelic collective developed a distinct brand of music influenced by science fiction, psychedelia and surreal humor, but throughout his career he incorporated visual elements to all facets of his art, from his personal costumes to his “Mothership” stage prop that is on permanent display at the National Museum of African American Culture and History in Washington, DC. Clinton grew up in New Jersey and owned a barbershop in Plainfield, when he formed a doo-wop band called The Parliaments. Under the names Parliament and Funkadelic, in the 1970s, his group produced a hybrid and diverse sound. In the early 1980s, Clinton recorded music as a solo artist, and his Atomic Dog reached #1 on the R&B and #101 on the Pop
charts. Clinton’s music was very influential on rap and hip hop music, and he often collaborated with well known artists such as Tupac Shakur and the Wu Tang Clan. In the 1990s and 2000s, he broadened his interests to film and painting. Clinton’s canvasses address similar aesthetics and subjects as his music. He often discusses rhythm in painting similarly to that in music. Despite his bold colorful compositions, Clinton is colorblind. He has explored color theory with his longtime friend, Overton Loyd (who created cover art for Parliament).
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Atomic Dog, n.d. acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 inches signed and titled unframed
Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,000-2,000
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KEVIN COLE (b. 1960) Kevin Cole’s iconographic symbolism balances the aesthetic and political content of his work against the backdrop of African and Asian origins, as well as an uniquely American history. Although the symbolic use of the necktie in Cole’s work has regal and international references, its symbolic use of tied necks within the African American experience is referenced in Billie Holiday’s song, Strange Fruit. Nationwide lynchings exemplified the worst aspect of the human condition and the social and economic contempt for Black American men, women, and families. Working in a range of mediums, use of repetitive form, and color create three dimensional structures that invite those who experience his work to reflect upon abstracted references to a necktie used for status, beauty, fashion and the destruction of human life. Cole’s work celebrates history, survival, and a personal memory of a time and place. ---Halima Taha Kevin Cole studied at University of Arkansas Pine Bluff (BS), University of Illinois (MA) and Northern Illinois University (MFA). His work has been included in numerous significant exhibitions, including at the Dallas African American Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
In 2020, Cole received the Brenda and Larry Thompson Award from the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. This award is given to an African American Artist who has made significant but often lesser-known contributions to the visual arts tradition and has roots or major connections to Georgia. Cole’s work is prominently featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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Sweet Hour of Prayer, Color of Music Series, 1995-2001 acrylic on paper cutout collage mounted on white board 59 1/2 x 46 inches signed, dated and titled in pencil housed in shallow shadowbox style frame with Plexiglas $10,000-15,000
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ROBERT COLESCOTT (1925-2009) Robert Colescott was born in Oakland in 1925. He studied at UC-Berkeley and in Paris with French modernist, Fernand Leger. Colescott’s development after his return to the United States soon culminated in works in which masterpieces of the European past were reinterpreted in terms of a dialogue between tradition and the contemporary life of the black community. He combined elements from such artist as Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso with the narratives of black themes, events and symbols to create an often humorous new configuration. The reuse of familiar themes was filled with new life and at the same time with a reevaluation of black historic and contemporary reality. —Udo Kultermann from St James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs editor, St James Press, 1997 Photo: Robert Colescott at Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
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I Can't Dance, 1996
stone lithograph 25 x 18 inches (image) 30 x 22 1/4 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated (12/96) and numbered HC 6 (Ed, 70) From the Resounding Heart colophon, a set of eight lithographs published by Hand Graphics, Santa Fe, NM. $1,000-2,000
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ROBERT COLESCOTT (1925-2009)
Surprised Nymph, c. 1975
oil on canvas laid down on panel (original) 19 1/2 x 20 inches signed label verso from Fountain Gallery of Art, 115 S.W. 4th Ave. Portland, OR with artist's name and address Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $10,000-20,000
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ROBERT COLESCOTT (1925-2009)
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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015) Eldzier Cortor was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1916. His family moved to Chicago in 1917 where Cortor was to play a large role in the Chicago Black Renaissance of the 1930’s and 1940’s. In 1936, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later studied at Chicago’s Institute of Design under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project in the 1930’s and in 1941, cofounded the South Side Community Art Center on South Michigan Avenue. After winning two successive Rosenwald Grants, he traveled to the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas. It was here that he began to paint the women of the Gullah community as the archetype of African American culture, with their long, elegant necks and colorful head scarves. He focused on “classical composition”, making his figures resemble African sculpture. In 1946, LIFE magazine published one of these semi-nude female figures. In 1949, Cortor received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to the West Indies to paint in Jamaica and Cuba before settling in Haiti for two years. There he taught classes at the Centre d’Art in Port au Prince. Cortor worked up until his death in 2015 at the age of 99.
Recent exhibitions of his work have been held at the South Side Community Art Center in 2014; Eldzier Cortor Coming Home, an exhibition of prints, was held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston held a joint exhibition of the works of Cortor and John Wilson in 2017. His work is found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Howard University. Photo: The artist, 1949, taken by Gordon Parks.
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Black Art Auction is deeply grateful to share some reflections on his father from Michael Cortor, the artist’s son: A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about my father (as well as my mother). You know him as the artist, one of the few who could claim membership in both the Chicago and Harlem Renaissance. I was very fortunate enough to be surrounded by art growing up as well as experienced a true racial diversity living in a modest household on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My father had a very long career and out -lived all of his contemporaries. His passion was art and yet at the age of ninety-three he took a pause and devoted himself to caring for my mother who was terminally ill. After her passing, two years later, my father returned to his passion of art and completed thirteen paintings (a couple of them quite large) and had two unfinished works. His very last signed painting was a painting that he based on one of his “L'Abbatoire” etchings.
The artist’s son commenting on Eldzier’s relationship with his roommate and travel companion, fellow painter, Harlan Jackson (an abstract expressionist). The two traveled to Haiti together, Cortor on a grant from the Rosenwald Fund: My father never truly went into the abstract route that many artists went during the post WWII era. I think that my father enjoyed the challenge of being able to create realistic images and often sought inspiration from European classical painters, while at the same time looked towards African and the Caribbean for his overall statements and female figures. But I guess with two artists having different approaches and styles probably were the best of company since there wouldn’t be competition, as was the case between Picasso and Braque.
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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015)
Compositional Image 2, c. 1970
oil on canvas 11 x 14 inches signed; additionally signed and titled on stretcher $20,000-30,000
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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015)
Marche Assemblage III, c. 1985 oil on canvas signed 20 x 17.5 inches original frame $35,000-45,000
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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015)
Dance (Dance Composition No. 31), 1978
etching and aquatint with hand coloring 21 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches signed, titled, and numbered 6/10; with "II State Impression" $2,000-3,000
My father’s printing technique was often very involved. Many of the plates themselves are works of art. My father originally wanted to cut up the plates, while we were cataloging his artwork after my mother’s passing. But I discouraged that because I thought that it was important to preserve the entire process, so we began a two year process of donating artwork to institutions that had some connection to my father’s art. Further reading: https://www.mfa.org/search?search=cortor https://www.metmuseum.org/search-results#!/search?q=cortor https://www.artic.edu/search?q=cortor
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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015)
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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005) Social realist painter, illustrator, and educator, Ernest Crichlow was born in 1914 in Brooklyn, NY. He began studying commercial art at the School of Commercial Illustrating and Advertising Art, NY, and fine art with the Art Student’s League. In 1930, Crichlow found a mentor in Augusta Savage when he joined the Harlem Artist’s Guild, alongside other such notables as Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Norman Lewis. Here he found his niche creating social realist works that packed a powerful message. During the Depression, he found work with the WPA, teaching art and working on mural projects. He used this platform to create works that captured “the indomitable inner strength, intrinsic beauty, dignity, and essential humanity of the African American community.” continued He continued to support his community by establishing Brooklyn’s Fulton Art Fair in 1958. In 1969, along with Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis he co-founded the Cinque Art Gallery, dedicated to supporting and exhibiting the works of emerging black artists. He created a 25 panel mural in 1976 for the Boys and Girls High School of Brooklyn depicting people at work in various trades and careers as an inspiration for those students to achieve excellence. Crichlow was also known for his illustrations and children’s books. Throughout his career, he participated in notable exhibitions at the American Negro
Exposition, Chicago, 1940; the New York World’s Fair; the Harlem Community Center; the Downtown Gallery; ACA Gallery; and Atlanta University. He was honored as one of ten black artists from the National Conference of Artists by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970’s. Crichlow’s, Reflections of Another Time, was included in Southern Journeys, African American Artists of the South, a traveling museum exhibition, originating out of the Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, FL in 2011. In 2018, his work was included in Truth and Beauty: Charles White and His Circle held at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, NY.
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Untitled (Generations), 1953 oil on masonite 17 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches signed and dated $7,000-9,000
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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005)
Street Princess, 1982
color lithograph 30 x 20 inches (image) signed, titled, dated and numbered, 54/100 in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $2,000-3,000
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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005)
Young Girl, 1987
acrylic on board 22 x 18 1/2 inches signed and dated $8,000-10,000
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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005)
Girl at Window, 1965 oil on masonite 36 x 24 inches signed and dated original frame
Literature: Ernest Crichlow: a life in art: May 4 to June 17, 2000: The Skylight Gallery, Center for Arts and Culture, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corp., 2000. Black Art: An International Quarterly 1 (Winter, 1976), p. 49 (color). $10,000-15,000
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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005)
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ALLAN ROHAN CRITE (1910-2007) Allan Rohan Crite was born in New Jersey, but spent his entire life in Boston. He graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 1936, and was awarded a BA from Harvard Extension School in 1968. Crite participated in the Public Works of Art Project in 1934 and the Works Progress Administration/ Federal Art Project in 1936, while still a student. He was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936, called New Horizons in American Art held under the auspices of the WPA/FAP. In 1940, Crite was employed as a technical illustrator for the Boston Naval Shipyard, and he worked there until 1971. He had abandoned large-scale oils of neighborhood scenes by the 1940s, and was concentrating on drawings and watercolors. Historian, diligent researcher, theologian, teacher, philosopher, simple believer, Allan Crite is a bit of all these things, but most of all he is an artist whose agile mind and equally agile hands have never tired of creating a world of images simultaneously local and global, divine and secular, poetic yet unsentimental. His art, marked by narrative and documentary characteristics, retains a simple beauty, simply presented.
Crite’s illustrations were published for many years in the 1970s and 80s as covers for Sunday service leaflets. His work may be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Edmund Barry Gaither, essay to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Allan Rohan Crite, Artist-Reporter of the African American Community; Frye Art Museum, 2001, 23.
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I Love a Parade!, 1948
lithograph on paper 7 1/2 x 9 5/8 inches signed, titled, dated, numbered, 14/15 in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $2,000-3,000
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DEWEY CRUMPLER (b. 1949) After Crumpler completed his education at the San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University, he went on to Mexico City to study under the muralists Pablo O’Higgins and David Siqueiros with the help of Evangeline Montgomery and Elizabeth Catlett. He then collaborated with the Black Panther Party to completed a triptych mural that was to replace a controversial mural originally installed at George Washington High School in San Francisco’s Richmond district. Crumpler went on to paint other murals in the city, including The Fire Next Time, 1984, Joseph P. Lee Recreation Center, 3rd and Newcomb Streets and Black And Tan Jam at the Western Addition Cultural Center. Digital images of his murals were included in Soul of a Nation in 2017 at Tate Modern, London. Crumpler became an associate professor of painting at San Francisco Art Institute, a position he still holds. His work continues to evolve as he creates paintings, collages, videos, sculpture, and installations, examining Black consciousness by re-contextualizing symbols such as the tulip and top hat. Recent exhibitions have included 2008’s of Tulips and Shadows: The Visual Metaphors of
Dewey Crumpler held at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles and Collapse: Recent Works by Dewey Crumpler held in 2018 at the Hedreen Gallery, Seattle University, WA. His work is featured in the permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California; the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, California; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles. REF: Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA Photo: Black Artists on Art, v. 1, Revised edition, Lewis/Waddy, p.75
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Nine, 2009 Mixed media construction (white and black styrofoam, acrylic, acid etched glass) 10 x 10 inches image Signed, titled, dated verso Original frame Provenance: Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Private collection, Los Angeles, CA $2,000-3,000
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WILLIS “BING” DAVIS (b. 1937) In my works I am concerned with taking a given medium and making a personal statement based on my perception, observations, and response to my environment. Davis is a multi-media artist, creating ceramics, assemblages, photographs and collage. He studied at DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, Miami of Ohio in Oxford, OH, and also at Indiana State University in Terre Haute and the Dayton Art Institute. In the 1970s-1980s, he exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, University of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Purdue University, DePauw University, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, National Center for African American Artists, Boston, and the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, OH.
REF: St James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs; Black Artists on Art, vol 2, Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy.
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Ancestral Spirit, Dance #A-1, 1986
aquatint 20 x 16 inches signed, dated, titled, and "AP" in pencil $800-1,000
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WILLIS “BING” DAVIS (b. 1937)
Ancestral Spirit, Dance #A-2, 1986
aquatint 19 1/2 x 16 inches signed, dated, titled, and "AP" in pencil Printed at an artist co-op on Que Mas Island, off the coast of Seattle, WA $800-1,000
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WILLIS “BING” DAVIS (b. 1937)
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BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901-1979) Beauford Delaney’s talent was discovered by local and influential painter, Lloyd Branson whose support took him to Boston to study at the Massachusetts Normal School, the Copley Society, and the South Boston School of Art. In 1929, he moved to New York, where he became an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, painting urban landscapes populated with the disenfranchised people he lived among, as well as portraits, sometimes of his famous friends. Although he was a well respected artist with influential friends like James Baldwin, Henry Miller, and Georgia O’Keefe, he couldn’t escape the sense of marginalization he felt as an individual who constantly had to overcome the inequalities of being not only African American, but homosexual as well. He moved to Paris in 1950, a place where he felt a new sense of freedom. His style shifted from the figurative compositions of New York City life, to abstract expressionist studies of color and light, notably a vibrant, Van Gogh inspired yellow. In 1956, he met Darthea Speyer, an American cultural attaché living in Paris. She
organized a group exhibition of works which included Delaney at the American Cultural Center in 1966, as well as two solo exhibitions of his work at her gallery which was established in 1968. Delaney lived his remaining years in Paris, eventually being hospitalized for mental illness and dying in 1979. His work may be found in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; the Smithsonian Institution, and Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, MA.
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Untitled, 1961
gouache on paper 23 x 18 inches signed and dated; estate stamp (1979) verso $30,000-50,000
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JOSEPH DELANEY (1904-1991) Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the younger brother of Beauford Delaney, Joseph Delaney moved to New York City in 1930 where he enrolled at the Art Student’s League. During the Great Depression, he painted many portraits on commission and was employed by the WPA. Beginning in 1931, Delaney became a regular exhibitor at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit where he offered portrait sketches executed during the event. His work shows a great love of New York City where he remained for 55 years capturing dynamic urban scenes and diverse figures depicted in a loose, exaggerated style. In 1985, Delaney returned to Knoxville, where he was named artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee, until his death in 1991. His work is found in the major collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Alain Locke Society, Princeton University,
Princeton, N.J; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and the Harlem State Office Building Art Collection, New York. REF: Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, catalog for the exhibition: Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, 2004. Frederick Moffatt.
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Nude, c. 1940
ink wash on paper 10 x 14 inches signed partial label verso Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,000-2,000
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RICHARD DEMPSEY (1909-1987) Richard Dempsey was born in Ogden, Utah, and spent his youth in Oakland, California where he attended Sacramento Junior College (1929-31) as an art major. He furthered his education at the California College of Arts and Crafts (1932-34) in Oakland, California, the Student Arts Center, and with Sargent Johnson. He later became an instructor himself at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington DC). In 1941, he moved to Washington, D.C. to work as an engineering draftsman with the Federal Power Commission, and remained to become an important part of the Washington DC art scene. In 1946, along with Elizabeth Catlett, he was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship for a series of paintings of outstanding American Negroes. In 1951, he was awarded a Purchase Award in the Corcoran Gallery’s Tenth Annual Exhibition.
Photo: Dempsey painting at the Plaza, Washington DC, Richard Dempsey papers, 1929-1989, bulk 1960s-1980s. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Dempsey was a prolific painter and worked on as many as six canvasses at one time, switching as his moods changed.
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Carousel, c.1950
oil on canvas 31 x 35 inches signed original painted frame $6,000-8,000
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RICHARD DEMPSEY (1909-1987)
Mountains in Mexico, 1962
oil on canvas 41 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches signed label verso from Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, D.C. $8,000-12,000
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RICHARD DEMPSEY (1909-1987)
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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936) A gifted athlete, James Denmark was granted a scholarship to study at Florida A&M University, where he met and worked with Samella Lewis. Lewis invited many well-known African American artists to lecture there, so Denmark had the opportunity to meet them and gain insight into their work. After a short hiatus from school, he enrolled at Pratt Institute of Fine Arts (M.F.A., 1976). He was highly influenced by the colorful collages of Jacob Lawrence, who was teaching at Pratt. Denmark snuck into many of Lawrence’s classes although he was not officially enrolled in them. Lawrence introduced Denmark to Romare Bearden and Al Hollingsworth. It was about this time Denmark moved away from charcoal and watercolor works and committed himself to the art of collage. Denmark participated in several historically significant exhibitions, including Rebuttal to the Whitney; Afro-American Artists, New York and Boston; and Contemporary Black Artists, 1969. His collage, Black Odyssey (1980) was executed to commemorate the opening of the new Schomburg Center building in New York. His work is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Denmark was represented by Nigel Jackson at the Acts of Art Gallery, where he had four solo shows in the early 1970s. Jackson spoke of Denmark (and the gallery): “I want a big structure, I want a beautiful thing. I want somebody to be able to encourage a man like James Denmark who has done this kind of work, which is unique in itself, to encourage him, not to limit him.” (REF: Acts of Art and Rebuttal in 1971, catalog accompanying the exhibition at Hunter College, Howard Singerman, 2018; essay by Clara Chapin, p. 71)
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Jewels, c. 1985
mixed media collage 25 x 15 1/2 inches signed $3,000-4,000
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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)
Untitled, c. 1980
collage 8 1/2 x 13 inches signed with marker in image nicely framed Provenance: Collection of Faith Grobman, New Jersey $3,500-5,500
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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)
Figures in a Landscape, c. 1980 collage 7 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches signed $2,500-3,500
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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)
Seated Nude, n.d.
mixed media collage 32 x 20 inches signed $6,000--8,000
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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)
Untitled, c. 1980
collage 11 x 6 3/4 inches signed with marker in image nicely framed Provenance: Collection of Faith Grobman, New Jersey $2,500-3,500
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ED DWIGHT (b. 1933) Ed Dwight was born in 1933 in Kansas City, KS to Georgia Baker Dwight and Edward Dwight Sr., who played second base and centerfield for the Kansas City Monarchs and other Negro league teams from 1924 to 1937. He received a scholarship to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, but opted to study engineering at Metropolitan Community College, KS. After graduation, he enlisted in the United States Air Force where he became a test pilot and eventually was selected by the Kennedy administration as the first African American astronaut trainee. He was not selected by NASA, however, and resigned from the Air Force in 1966 due to racial politics. After his resignation, Dwight pursued a variety of occupations but returned to school to study sculpting at the University of Denver where he learned to operate Denver’s metal casting foundry. He was commissioned by the Colorado Centennial Commission to create a series of bronzes titled, Black Frontier Spirit in the American West. The series depicted the contribution of African Americans to the opening of the West. With the support of the National Parks Service, this series of 50 bronze sculptures was on exhibit for several years throughout the U.S.
His next series of over 70 bronzes, the Evolution of Jazz, opened at St. Louis’s historic Old Courthouse and traveled nationally for 5 years. Dwight operates a 30,000 sq. ft. studio/gallery and foundry in Denver. He has created 129 memorial sculptures and over 18,000 gallery pieces, including paintings and sculptures. REF: Ed Dwight Studios, https://www. eddwight.com/about Photo: Choosing: An Exhibit of Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticism by Black Americans, 1925-1985, Bontemps, 1986, p.84
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Jazz, c. 1985
bronze (original gold finish) 14 1/4 x 6 x 2 3/4 inches (bronze only) small wooden base signed and numbered 3/150 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,000-2,000
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JAMES EDWARDS (1925-1991) James Wilson Edwards was born in Washington, D.C., and studied at the Art Student’s League in New York and the Academie Julian in Paris. He settled in Princeton, New Jersey and befriended fellow artists, Rex Gorleigh and Hughie LeeSmith. Lee-Smith was ten years older than Edwards and was a great influence on the latter’s surrealist compositions. Like LeeSmith, Edwards liked to place a solitary figure in a barren, contemplative scene. Edwards exhibited regularly at the Studio on Canal, Princeton, NJ in the early 1970s, and also at the Raymond Duncan Gallery, Paris; University of Wisconsin; the Yardley Art Association (Edwards was the creative director for Matlin Co., Inc., in Yardley, PA); and the Trenton Museum, NJ.
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Untitled, Surrealist Scene, c. 1960 oil on canvas 18 1/4 x 15 1/4 inches signed $2,000-3,000
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JAMES EDWARDS (1925-1991)
Woman and Bird, c. 1960 oil on board 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches signed
Provenance: Private collection, Philadelphia, PA $1,000-2,000
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JAMES EDWARDS (1925-1991)
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THOMAS FAIR (contemporary) The Hot and the Cool (lot of two works), c. 1960 oil on canvas 22 x 28 inches signed, exhibition label with title and artist's address with Untitled Singer, c. 1960 oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches signed $600-800
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TOM FEELINGS (1933-2003) Tom Feelings, a native of Brooklyn, New York, attended the school of Visual Arts for two years and then joined the Air Force in 1953, working in London as a staff artist for the Graphics Division of the Third Air Force. In 1958, he created a weekly comic strip, Tommy Traveler in the World of Negro History, which ran in The New York Age, a Harlem-based newspaper. Feelings traveled to Ghana and Guyana early in his career, and spent his time in both countries illustrating, teaching, and consulting. When he returned from his first trip to Africa, he began illustrating books with African and AfricanAmerican themes. To Be a Slave, a non-fiction children’s book written by Julius Lester and illustrated by Feelings, was chosen as the 1969 Newberry Honor Book. It was the first book of its kind to receive such an award. He illustrated twenty books in his career.
subjects. While in Africa, he worked for Africa Review, established in 1971 as a journal discussing African politics, development and international affairs. When in the United States, Feelings exhibited at the Brooklyn Fulton Art Fair; Atlanta University; Morgan State College; Park Village Gallery, (solo); and the Market Place Gallery, NYC.
The School of Visual Arts recognized Feelings with its Outstanding Achievement Award in 1974. He has received eight Certificates of Merit from The Society of Illustrators, along with a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant in 1982. Feelings produced primarily drawings or understated watercolors of figurative
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Father and Infant, c. 1970
watercolor and drawing on paper 7 x 9 1/2 inches signed $1,000-2,000
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VIOLET FIELDS (b. 1951 ) My work requires that I free fall into inspiration and that I allow that inspiration to map out the course of my work…This process is done at a neckbreaking speed, where I paint without looking until the urgency passes and the painting is well in hand. It is only after that process that I return to myself to use my skills and experience to bring forth work that meets my own criteria for sound painting. Artist and poet, Violet Fields, was born and raised in Berkeley, CA. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, California State University and the California College of Arts and Crafts. In addition to solo shows, her work has been included in Emerging Artists: New Expressions (1991) and Visual Rhythms (2012) both held at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
Photo: Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, King-Hammond, 1995, p.79
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Suggested Reading, 1999 mixed media on paper 25 x 32 1/2 inches signed and dated $2,500-3,500
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FRANK FRAZIER (b. 1943 ) I’m concerned about the future of the Black artist; the lasting effect of our work on our own children. It’s important that we, as artists, make some statements to affect change. Originally from Harlem, Frazier studied at the Art Students League and Hofstra University. In 1980, he moved to Dallas and began working in silkscreen. He had hoped to make his art more affordable to people and make it easier to share his narrative. He uses swatches of vibrantly colored Kente cloth and figurines from Ghana and Upper Volta, as well as the Ashanti tribe. He has exhibited at Howard University; Martin Luther King, Jr Library, Dallas; and the Brooklyn Museum. (REF: Hearne Fine Art, Arkansas)
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Untitled, 2010
mixed media collage 12 x 10 inches initialed and dated Provenance: acquired directly from the artist at Longwood University (Farmville, Virginia); Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,000-2,000
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FRANK FRAZIER (b. 1943 )
Untitled, 1992
mixed media 21 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches signed $1,500-2,500
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FRANK FRAZIER (b. 1943 )
Untitled, 1998
mixed media collage 25 1/2 x 18 inches signed and dated $2,500-3,500
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REGINALD GAMMON (1921-2005 ) Gammon was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of the Industrial Arts (1941, 1946-1949) , Tyler School of Fine Art and Temple University (1950-1951). He also served in the U.S. Navy from 19441946.
In
Gammon was a figure painter first and foremost. His early works, such as Alienation, The Scottsboro Boys, Harlem 66, Scottsboro Mothers, and Freedom Now (recently included in the exhibition Soul of a Nation, Art in the Age of Black Power) are powerful, somewhat angry images; the artist uses color sparingly to accentuate the message and lessen any decorative element. In fact, the 1965 exhibit of works by artists in the group Spiral (of which Gammon was a member), was titled, First Group Showing: Works in Black and White (1965). Gammon exhibited at Brooklyn College (1968); Minneapolis Institute of Art (1968); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1970); Studio Museum in Harlem; Martha Jackson Gallery; Philadelphia Civic Center; Flint Institute of Art; Rhode Island School of Art; Everson Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; and the Atlanta University Annuals, among other venues. Gammon was also a member of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, established by Benny Andrews and Cliff Joseph. He participated in the protest exhibition at Acts of Art Gallery, Rebuttal to the Whitney (1971), and had a solo show there in 1974.
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Still Life with Rhododendron, 1955 oil on canvas 36 x 18 inches signed $6,000-8,000
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933) Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1933. Shortly after his birth, the family (Gilliam was one of eight children) moved to Louisville, KY where he was raised. Gilliam attended college at the University of Louisville, receiving a BFA in 1955. That same year his first solo exhibition was held at the university. He went on to serve in the Army and upon his return, began working towards his MFA. After graduation, he taught for a year in the Louisville public schools until he moved to Washington D.C., where he continues to live today. Gilliam continued to teach in the Washington public schools as well as the Maryland Institute College of Art, University of Maryland and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh throughout his career. By the time Gilliam arrived in Washington D.C. in 1962, the Washington Color School had been established and included Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Thomas Downing. Gilliam met and became friends with Downing. Soon, his works became large, hard-edged abstractions. Ever-evolving, he continued to experiment with innovative methods - taping and pouring colors, folding and staining canvases. He created Beveled-edge paintings in which he stretched the canvas on a beveled frame, so that the painting appeared to emerge from the wall on which it was hung. In 1965, he abandoned the frame and stretcher altogether and began draping and suspending his paint stained canvases much like hanging laundry on the clothesline. Each work could be improvised and rearranged at will. The first of these was displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1969. Gilliam received numerous public and private commissions for his draped canvases. One of the largest of these was Seahorses in 1975. This six part work involved several hundred feet of paint stained canvas installed along the exterior walls of two adjacent wings of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1972 he represented the US in the
Venice Biennale. (continued) By 1975, Gilliam began to create dynamic geometric collages influenced by Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In 1977, he produced similar collages in monochromatic black hues. Re-invention has been a consistent component in Gilliam’s work throughout his career - he has constantly innovated, disrupted, and improvised and he is still doing all of it at age 86. He is now being represented by Pace Gallery in New York and David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. Gilliam’s work is found in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Tate Modern, London; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others. Recent exhibitions include: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983; Black: Color, Material, Concept, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 2015; Surface Matters, Edward H. Linde Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2015; Affecting Presence and the Pursuit of Delicious Experiences, the Menil Collection, Houston, 2015. A semi-permanent installation of Gilliam’s paintings is currently on view at Dia:Beacon, NY.
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Untitled, Hard-edge Abstraction, c. 1963-1965 acrylic on thick, gessoed paper 18 1/2 x 18 inches signed
Provenance: Andre "Mickey" Ferrell , studio assistant to the artist; to private collection, Los Angeles, California). $50,000-70,000
Sam Gilliam photographed on June 22, 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Marvin Joseph, Washington Post)
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
Untitled, Abstract Composition, 1970 mixed media collage 30 x 22 inches signed and dated
Provenance: Private collection, Philadelphia, PA. $20,000-30,000
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
Untitled, c. 1970
watercolor on washi paper 23 1/2 x 39 inches signed Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $20,000-30,000
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
For Xavier, 1990
color screenprint 30 1/4 x 38 1/2 inches signed, titled, dated and numbered 33/99 in pencil Printed by Stovall Printmaking Workshop, Washington, D.C., blind stamp LL $4,000-6,000
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
Paducah, 1976
collograph and dyeing on handmade paper 20 3/4 x 20 3/4 inches signed, dated, and numbered 8/8 in pencil within the image $2,500-3,500
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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)
Untitled, Abstract Composition, 1970 mixed media collage 30 x 22 inches signed and dated
Provenance: William Weege, private collection Cincinnati $25,000-35,000
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BERNARD GOSS (1913-1966) Bernard Goss was born in Sedalia, Missouri and became known as a painter, muralist, and printmaker. He studied at the University of Iowa, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Institute of Design. He married fellow artist Margaret Burroughs in 1939, and their coach-house flat became a social center, dubbed “little Bohemia,” for a wide and interracial circle of friends and colleagues. Burroughs and Goss worked together to help establish the South Side Community Art Center which opened in 1940, and later founded the DuSable Museum of Black History. Goss’s 1939 painting Musicians, appeared in Alain Locke’s, The Negro in Art. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Chicago Artists Group Galleries, 1938; American Negro Exposition, 1940; Howard University, 1941; WPA and the Black Artist: Chicago and New York, 1978; Illinois State Museum, The Flowering: African-American Artists and Friends in 1940s Chicago: A Look at the South Side Community Art Center. 1993; Koehnline Museum of Art, IL; Convergence: Jewish and African American Artists in Depression Era Chicago, 2008; Ohio Historical Center, 2010.
KELLY MILLER (1863-1939) was a mathematician, sociologist, essayist, and newspaper columnist. He aided W.E.B. Du Bois in editing The Crisis.
COUNTEE CULLEN ( 1903-1946), was a well known poet, playwright, and novelist especially popular during the Harlem Renaissance. This impressive portrait of an important American literary figure comes from the highly important family collection of Susan Cayton Woodson. Woodson served on the board of the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, and was instrumental in promoting and collecting works from the Black Chicago Renaissance. She befriended Eldzier Cortor, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright among many other important artists.
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Portrait of Kelly Miller, c. 1960
Portrait of Countee Cullen, c. 1960
Provenance: The Woodson Family Historical Collection, Chicago
Provenance: The Woodson Family Historical Collection, Chicago
$3,000-5,000
$3,000-5,000
oil on masonite 44 x 34 inches signed and titled
oil on masonite 42 x 31 1/2 inches signed and titled
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MARION GRIFFIN (20TH century) Marion Griffin, born in Columbia, South Carolina, is primarily a self-taught artist. Having learned the fundamentals of art in early childhood, she continued to grow through visiting museums, libraries, and other art institutions that could aid her awareness. Marion has exhibited in New York City, Brooklyn, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. -From the Medgar Evers College Art Collection, Broooklyn, NY.
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Untitled (Blues Trio), c. 1980 oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches signed $3,000-5,000
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LESTER GUNTER (b. 1936) Lester Gunter, son of a goldsmith, was born in Trinity Ville, Saint Thomas, Jamaica, West Indies. His studies include: The Jamaica School of Art from 1958 to 1963, Art Students League in New York from 1968 to 1970 and the National Academy of Fine Art from 1970-1972, where he won the James Augustus Suydam Bronze Medal Award for best figure painting. Gunter has studied under renowned artists Mayo Cousins, Robert Sawyers, Robert Brackman, Robert Phillipp, Hugh Gumpel and Julian Levi. He has exhibited his work in several one
man shows including the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York; Gallery+ in the Valley, Jamaica, West Indies; The Jamaica Contemporary Association, Kingston; St. Andrew Parrish Library; and The Institute of Jamaica. *Biography courtesy of Essie Green Galleries, New York. Essie Green Galleries opened their gallery in 1979 with a one-man show of Gunter’s work and has continually represented the artist’s work.
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The Reapers, 1985 oil on canvas 24 x 30 inches signed and dated $2,000-3,000
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INGE HARDISON (1904-2016) Hardison studied at Tennessee State A & I, the Art Students League (NY), and Vassar College. She worked in the theater and as a fine artist, primarily devoted to photography and sculpture. One of Hardison’s best-known images is a sculpture of Sojourner Truth (1990), a gift given by NY Governor Cuomo to President Nelson Mandela. Sculpture woke up again in the ‘60s. While teaching in a Freedom School in Harlem, I became reacquainted with the towering bravery and the deep commitment to freedom and justice of our black foreparents, and was moved to begin an ongoing series of sculptured portraits I called Negro Giants in History. In the ‘70s, I received my first public commission from Old Taylor Whiskies to do the Ingenious Americans, nine sculpted portraits of little-known black scientists and inventors, for a nationwide promotion. (REF: Gumbo Ya Ya, An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, intro by Leslie King-Hammond, 1995)
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Lot of two works Portrait Bust of Benjamin Banneker, 1968 from the Old Taylor Series, Ingenious Americans painted plaster 8-7/8 inches x 3-3/4 x 5-1/2 inches signed and dated subject is identified by a label on bottom
Provenance: Artist to private collection, NY to Armand-Paul Family Collection, NY $1,000-2,000
Portrait Bust of Matthew Henson,1966 from the Old Taylor Series, Ingenious Americans painted plaster 8-7/8 x 5 x 5 inches signed and dated subject is identified by label on bottom
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JOHN WESLEY HARDRICK (1891-1968) John Hardrick was born in Indianapolis to Shepard and Georgia Etta (West) Hardrick in 1891. He showed a talent for art as a young boy, and his work was brought to the attention of the owner of a local art store and framer, Herman Lieber, who helped the boy enroll in children’s classes at the John Herron School of Art (interestingly, many of the frames one will find on his paintings today were made by Lieber and bear the label). As a teenager, he began studying with important Hoosier Group impressionist painters, William Forsyth and Otto Stark. He worked at a foundry at night to put himself through John Herron (he executed a well known painting of this subject matter, illustrated in the catalog for the exhibition, A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans (Hardrick, Scott, Woodruff, and Majors), IMA, Warkel and Taylor, p. 59). In 1914, he was married to Georgia Ann Howard and held his first exhibition, which was successful. He shared a studio on Indiana Avenue with Hale Woodruff for some of that year, but increased financial pressures caused him to stop painting, and take a job in his family’s trucking business. When he resumed painting, he exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1927. One of his paintings, Little Brown Girl was purchased by a group of supportive black citizens and
donated to the Herron Art Institute for their permanent collection. It currently hangs at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Hardrick exhibited at the 2nd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Negro Art in San Diego in 1928, and the catalog read: In spite of acute poverty, this young man has the faculty of discerning beauty in everything, being able to face all his adversities with a smile that conceals the feeling within, at the same time he possesses a personality which strangely draws people to him. Additionally, he exhibited at the Hoosier Salon in 1929, 1931,and 1934, which were then held
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Portrait of a Man, c. 1940 oil on board 22 x 18 inches signed $2,000-3,000
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JOHN WESLEY HARDRICK (1891-1968)
in Chicago at Marshall Field and Company; he won first prize for a portrait at the Indiana State Fair in 1934; and he participated in the American Negro Exposition in Chicago, 1940. The Civil Works Administration commissioned Hardrick to paint a mural at the Crispus Attucks High School in 1934, but it was rejected by the principal because it depicted black foundry workers, not doctors and lawyers. Hardrick’s health declined by 1941, and he worked as a cab driver. He would keep supplies in the trunk of his cab, and while waiting for fares, quickly paint local street scenes; later, he would also offer the paintings for sale from the trunk of his cab. (REF: Tom Davis, research for the Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis) Hardrick’s landscapes are derived from the many trips he took to Brown County, about fifty miles from Indianapolis. He traveled to the area at the peak of the autumn season, when the leaves were at the height of their color; during the summer when the sun was bright and
hot; and in the winter when the ground was covered with snow. He did not sketch or paint during these visits . Instead, the artist took in the different scenes and committed them to memory. (REF: A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans, IMA, Warkel and Taylor, p. 41). He applied his paint very thickly, using a palette knife to create a tactile surface. He relied on a brush only to blend or add a shape, and use his thumb to mold the paint as if he were shaping a sculpture. (Ibid, p. 41) Hardrick worked quickly, beginning at the top of the canvas and working down. He was more concerned with the atmosphere and expression of the landscape than the descriptive qualities, thus following in the tradition of earlier African American landscape painters, Bannister and Duncanson. His landscapes were romanticized versions of his memories of his visits to the country. He blended his own paint when possible, and had a very distinctive palette.
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JOHN WESLEY HARDRICK (1891-1968)
Brown County, Indiana Landscape, c. 1935 oil on board 14 x 18 inches signed
Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $2,000-3,000
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BERNARD HARMON (1935-1989) Harmon was born in Philadelphia, and although little is known about his early years, we know he was an aspiring artist as a teenager (remarks from his sister, Virginia, included in his obituary) and he studied at the Philadelphia Museum School (BFA) and the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (MFA). He was a gifted portrait painter, and taught in the Philadelphia School District for 32 years. He exhibited locally, and helped organize an exhibit at the Philadelphia Civic Center - Afro American Artists, 1800-1969 , an historically significant show for black artists in the 1960s. Harmon exhibited three paintings there. Harmon also taught prepatory classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a summer program at Drexel University. He was dedicated to teaching children how to enrich their lives with art, and was instrumental in developing numerous programs all over the city toward that cause. His loose, expressionist style relates to the work of Alice Neel, who began her career in Philadelphia.
Photo: Artist, teacher Bernard Harmon (obituary), Kathy Brennan, Philadelphia Daily News, Aug 23, 1989, p. 30.
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Resting, 1965
oil on board 24 x 32 inches signed and dated $10,000-20,000
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PALMER HAYDEN (1890-1973) Born in Virginia in 1890, Palmer Hayden moved to Washington D.C. as a teen, working odd jobs and eventually joining the Ringling Bros. Circus. He made his first foray into art, drawing portraits of the performers for promotions. After an eight year stint in the Army, he moved to New York City and was able to study with Victor Perard, an instructor at the Cooper Union School of Art. During the summers of 1926 and 1927 he traveled to Maine to study at the Commonwealth Art Colony. The many landscapes and marine studies he painted here were shown in his first exhibition at the Civic Club in New York, and in 1926, he won the first Harmon Foundation gold medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Visual Arts for a painting of Boothbay Harbor titled, The Schooners. The prize money was used towards a trip to France where he resided for the next five years.
When he returned to New York, his work evolved into an unpretentious representation of the black American scene in which he used a “consciously naïve” style to represent AfricanAmerican folklore and contemporary scenes of Harlem. Hayden continued to live and work in New York until his death in 1973.
Hayden exhibited at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1927 and was included in the Salon des Tuileries in 1930, as well as the American Legion Exhibition in 1931. He continued to paint seascapes during his stay, but also began to develop his figurative painting and signature style, which remains controversial to this day.
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Vaugirard, c. 1930
watercolor on paper 21 x 14 1/2 inches signed and titled label from Miriam A. Hayden Collection verso, #618 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $10,000-20,000
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PALMER HAYDEN (1890-1973)
Unloading Tuna at Concarneau, c. 1964 watercolor on paper 20 x 27 inches signed $7,000-9,000
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PALMER HAYDEN (1890-1973)
Harbor at L'Orient, 1940 oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches signed
$10,000-15,000
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BARKLEY HENDRICKS (1945-2017) Painter and photographer best known for his portraits of young, urban men and women rendered in a realist or post-modern style. Barkley L. Hendricks was born in 1945 in north Philadelphia. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts between 1963 and 1967 and graduated with a BFA and MFA from Yale University School of Art, where he studied photography with Walker Evans. Hendricks was primarily a painter, his work incorporating photography more and more as his style evolved - rendering his subjects with exquisite detail to their clothing, shoes, jewelry, and other accoutrements. In 2008, his work was featured in the major exhibition, Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of Cool, organized by Trevor Schoonmaker, contemporary curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC. Of Hendricks work, Schoonmaker said, “His bold portrayal of his subject’s attitude and style elevates the common person to celebrity status. Cool, empowering, and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks’ artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today’s younger generation of artists.” The book Barkley Hendricks: Photography, is set to be released on June 1, 2021. The description of the book is as follows: Barkley L. Hendricks (1945–2017) revolutionized postmodern Black portraiture. This volume, the fourth in a five-part series dedicated to Hendricks’ career, focuses on the artist’s photographic oeuvre. Hendricks credited photography as a key facet of his practice, both as a tool for
documenting his own work and as a source of inspiration for his paintings. Influenced by his experiences under Walker Evans’ tutelage at Yale, Hendricks frequently took to the streets to capture the world as he saw it, with his subjects in their element as they lingered in front of stores or performed in jazz clubs. As in his paintings, Hendricks’ attention to graphic composition and ability to capture his subjects’ dynamism are stunning. For the first time, Hendricks’ considerable body of photographic work is collected in a single volume, revealing an essential though underdiscussed dimension of his art.
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Bermuda Sunshine, 1971 silver gelatin print 5 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches (image) signed, dated, and inscribed, "New Haven, CT" in pencil on mount $4,000-6,000
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BARKLEY HENDRICKS (1945-2017)
The Blacker the Cherry, 1976
silver gelatin print 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches signed, dated and inscribed, "N. London, CT" in pencil on mount $4,000-6,000
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BARKLEY HENDRICKS (1945-2017)
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FELRATH HINES (1913-1993) Abstract artist and conservator Felrath Hines was born in 1913 in Indianapolis and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1940’s. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1913, Hines began studying art in 1926 after receiving a scholarship for youth classes at the John Herron School of Art Saturday School. After graduating high school in 1931, Hines worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps and later as a railroad dining car waiter for the Chicago Northwestern Railroad. In 1945, he began his formal art training at the Art Institute of Chicago. After deciding to concentrate on design, Hines moved to New York City, where he worked as a fashion designer and studied at New York University and Pratt Institute. In 1963, Hines joined the black artist’s collective, Spiral, and participated in the first exhibition at Christopher Street Gallery. As Hines became more influenced by American modernists, he began to eliminate line from his compositions, focusing instead on simple shapes and a restrained color palette.
Recent exhibitions of his work include: Color Balance: Paintings by Felrath Hines and Alma Thomas, Nasher Museum of Art, NC, 2010; Felrath Hines and the Question of Color, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, FL, 2013; and It’s About Time: The Art of Felrath Hines, Indiana State Museum, June 22 - September 29, 2019;
His works are included in several collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Hines’ pieces in the Smithsonian include: Yellow and Gray, 1976, oil on linen, (Gift of Barbara Fiedler Gallery, 1978.128); Red Stripe with Green Background, 1986, oil on linen, (Gift of Dorothy C Fisher, 2011.25.2); Abstract landscape, oil on linen, (Gift of Dorothy C. Fisher, 2011.46); and Radiant, 1983, oil on linen, (Gift of Dorothy C. Fisher, 2011.46).
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Floral Still Life, 1957 oil on card stock 6 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches signed and dated $3,000-5,000
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GEOFFREY HOLDER (1930-2014) Geoffrey Holder was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad in 1930 and moved to New York City in 1952 after being invited to teach choreography at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance. He exhibited from 1955-1969 at the Barone Gallery and in 1957 had his first successful one-man show there. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 1957. His artwork has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Museum of the City of New York; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University; and the Barbados Museum. Holder was best-known for his work as an actor and dancer by the general public. He played the role of Punjab in the 1982 film version of the musical Annie and was the spokesperson for 7-Up, as the UnCola Man. He won a Tony award for costume design for The Wiz (1975). His most famous role was as the villian Baron Samedi in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973).
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Nude, n.d.
oil on canvas 47 1/2 x 57 3/4 inches $6,000-8,000
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AL HOLLINGSWORTH (1928-2000) Hollingsworth was born in Harlem to Barbadian immigrants. While still a teen, he worked after school as an artist assistant at Holyoke Publishing Company for Catman Comics. Hollingsworth continued with his own syndicated comics in the early 1950’s while attending the College of the City of New York. He decided later to concentrate on fine art and began painting in an abstract expressionist style. Hollingsworth tended to work in themes working out his ideas in a variety of media. One of his themes was The Women. “I take my hat off doubly to the Black woman,” he was quoted in an interview published in Black Art, An International Quarterly (Fall 1977). “I wanted people to recognize the pride of women, the spiritual quality of women, the sacrifices of women.” Hollingsworth’s first one man show, Exodus, was held at the Ward Eggleston Gallery, NY in 1961. He produced paintings, drawings, and collages both abstract and representational in style. Among Hollingsworth’s series were Cry City (1963-65), The Prophet Series (1970), and the Subconscious Series. He was a member of
Spiral, along with other notable African American artists like Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Earl Miller, Norman Lewis and Hale Woodruff. Throughout his long and varied career, Hollingsworth also created and hosted the television show, You’re Part of Art on NBC in 1970, was an instructor at the Art Student’s League, and a professor at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.
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Untitled, Golden City, c. 1965 oil on masonite 20 x 33 1`/2 inches signed $2,500-4,500
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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010) Varnette Honeywood is an artist who celebrates black lifestyles in America with images rich in African references... Honeywood’s primary concern is to illustrate the strong, reassuring, and free expressions of proud Black people. For Honeywood, this goes far beyond depicting the icons of African American history to her own community. She is documenting a secular historical record of everyday African American life. “Who else”, says Honeywood, “is going to interpret or document these feelings..and who else is going to deal with our triumphs and our sufferings if it is not us?” -Curtis James, Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, 1995, p. 110. Varnette Honeywood was born in Los Angeles and studied at Spelman College and USC. She visited Africa in 1977, when her work was exhibited at FESTAC. She met Bill and Camille
Cosby in the 1980s, and a reproduction of one of her works was chosen to hang in the living room set on The Cosby Show. Honeywood was a prolific printmaker as well as painter. REF: Forever Free: Art by African-American Women 1862-1980, Center for the Visual Arts Gallery, Illinois State University, 1981; St James Guide to Black Artists, editor Thomas Riggs, 1997, pp. 251-252.
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Snuff Dippers, 1982
screenprint 24 1/2 x 18 1/8 inches signed, titled and dated in pencil $1,000-2,000
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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010)
African Women, 1982
screenprint 14 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches signed, titled, dated in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,000-2,000
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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010)
Rap Street, 1979
lithograph 24 x 24 inches (image) signed, dated, and titled in pencil Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,500-2,500
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RAYMOND HOWELL (1927-2002) Raymond Howell’s paintings are based in realism, with eclectic influences of surrealism and impressionism. He has experimented with collage, mural painting and print-making and has created series of works on such subject matter as jazz musicians. An artist whose work focuses on African Americans, Howell describes himself as a role model for artists who have traditionally been reluctant to paint African American subjects. Howell has been a longtime fixture in the Bay Area art scene. In the mid 1960’s he opened Art Associates West, a gallery and art school in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, which operated for nearly a decade. Howell’s 1965 painting The Brown Family was shown at the opening of the Oakland Museum, and was later purchased for the museum collection. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, and in 1999, Stanford University presented a 40 year retrospective of his paintings. Photo: Black Artists on Art v. 1, Lewis/Waddy, 11.
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The Golden Gate Bridge, c. 1970 oil on board 12 x 16 inches signed $1,000-2,000
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RAYMOND HOWELL (1927-2002)
Harvest Dance, c. 1960 oil on masonite 30 x 24 inches signed original frame $5,000-7,000
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RAYMOND HOWELL (1927-2002)
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MANUEL HUGHES (b. 1939) Hughes, known to his friends as “Manny”, was born in St Louis, Missouri, and at the young age of 8, enrolled himself in the People’s Art Center. He eventually studied at the University of Missouri (BFA, MFA), and was initially an abstract artist, but turned to realism. He is best known for realist still life paintings of objects he found and bought at flea markets in New York and Paris. A.M. Weaver writes in St James Guide to Black Artists : “Light through the use of color is a vehicle to heighten the dramatic effect of the appearance of objects that comprise his cluttered compositions. The theatrical quality of his paintings re-enhanced at intervals through the use of stark..backgrounds”. (p. 258) Hughes has exhibited in numerous important venues over the decades of his career, including Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art,
1971; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Kenkeleba Gallery, NYC; Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas; Pratt Institute; Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; O.K. Harris, NYC; and Liz Harris Gallery, Boston. REF: Black Artists on Art, vol. 1., Lewis/ Waddy.
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Nature Morte, c. 1988 oil on canvas 24 x 36 inches signed "Hughes" verso. $2,000-3,000
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MANUEL HUGHES (b. 1939)
Dolls (Triptych), n.d.
acrylic on canvas mounted to board 15.75 x 11.75 inches, 17 x 13 inches (largest, as framed) 15 x 10 inches, 16.25 x 11 inches (as framed) 17 x 8.25 inches, 18 x 9.25 inches (as framed) All works presented in matching artist's frames. Each signed 'Hughes' lower left. $2,000-3,000
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MANUEL HUGHES (b. 1939)
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MANUEL HUGHES (b. 1939)
Ribbonscapes
acrylic on canvas signed $2,000-3,000
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MANUEL HUGHES (b. 1939)
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RASHID JOHNSON (b.1977) Rashid Johnson was born in Evanston, Illinois, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College, Chicago. He first received critical attention when his work was included in the exhibition, Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem, curated by Thelma Golden in 2001. The same year, two photographs were accepted into the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions that followed were, Chickenbones and Watermelon Seeds: The African American Experience as Abstract Art, in which the artist used stereotypical African American food culture items, placing them on photographic paper and exposing them to light through an iron reactive process; Manumission Papers (2002), so-named for the papers freed slaves were required to carry to prove their status. Johnson showed photographic abstracts of feet, hands and elbows. This was considered a study in racial identity because the parts were not identifiable; and Seeing in the Dark, Winston-Salem State University (Diggs Gallery); In this exhibit, Johnson focused on images of homeless men. In conjunction with the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, he exhibited The Evolution of the Negro Political Costume in 2004, presenting outfits worn by African American politicians. The exhibition, The Production of Escapism: A Solo Project by Rashid Johnson was held at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary
Art in 2005, and curated by Christopher West. This work addressed distraction and relief from reality through art and fantasy, using photos, video and site-specific installation to study escapist tendencies, often with a sense of humor that bordered on absurd. More recently, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2012, held Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks, which was both a retrospective and Johnson’s first major museum solo exhibition. This exhibit recently traveled to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (at Washington University in St Louis). Johnson uses nearly every medium in his work, and in that way, cleverly avoids limitation. That being said, the majority of his body of work is based in sculpture or photography. In 2020, Johnson received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Television Movie for Native Son.
Rashid Johnson, Antoine's Organ, 2016. Installation view, Unlimited, Art Basel, Basel, 2018. © Rashid Johnson
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Antoine's Organ, 2017 digital print on Epson Hot Press Bright 330 gsm paper 16 x 20 inches signed, dated, and numbered 34/50 verso $2,000-4,000 Video about Antoine's Organ at Art Basel 2018.
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FREDERICK D. JONES, JR. (1913-1996) A modernist figure painter, Fred Jones’ work often revealed the influence of Eldzier Cortor, a mentor of his at the Art Institute of Chicago. Jones’s canvasses often held tall, languid African American women in other-wordly surroundings. Indeed, Jones’s work is a remarkable synthesis of elements and influences that he was exposed to throughout his life, as well as an innate sense of design and sensitivity to his subjects. His indelible style was shaped first at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges and Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. During this time, Hale Woodruff took him under his wing, along with fellow artist Wilmer Jennings. Jones was one of the lucky students who was given the opportunity to assist him with murals that were later installed at Talladega University. Jones went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, with the financial help of a generous patron, Harrison Jones, an executive at Coca Cola. He studied painting with Louis Ritman, an American Impressionist with Paris connections. Jones’s work was featured in the Chicago and Vicinity Exhibitions from 19461951.
He focused on the technical aspects of color, applying it to his art - the telling of the story of Black struggle. In an interview, Jones was quoted as saying that Cortor “taught him that he could make the struggle beautiful.” Jones was also involved with the South Side Community Art Center, serving as assistant director in 1947 - Rex Goreleigh was the director. Photo: Two Black Artists of the FDR Era: Marion Perkins and Frederick D. Jones, DuSable Museum of African American History, 1990: 7.
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Fisherman, c. 1960
woodcut print on paper 9 1/2 x 7 inches (image) 11 1/2 x 8 inches (sheet) signed, titled, numbered 1/8 in pencil $500-700
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FREDERICK D. JONES, JR. (1913-1996)
Woman Combing Hair, c. 1960 watercolor and ink on paper 20 1/4 x 13 inches signed $2,000-3,000
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FREDERICK D. JONES, JR. (1913-1996)
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LAWRENCE JONES (1910-1996) Jones was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the oldest of 12 siblings. He left Virginia and registered at the Art Institute of Chicago where he studied from 1934-1936. In Chicago, Jones befriended accomplished artists Charles White, Eldzier Cortor and Frank Neal. He also worked in the art studios at Hull House. Jones did not finish his degree there, but moved to New Orleans and simultaneously studied and taught art at Dillard University (1936-1940). While there, he was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship to travel to Mexico and study at the Taller de Grafica Popular. In 1941, Jones went to teach at Fort Valley State College in Georgia. One of his students was Benny Andrews. A year after arriving in Georgia, he was drafted into the army. He painted a mural while serving at Fort McClellan titled, Negro Work and Life in Georgia. After the war, Jones created a new art department at Jackson State University in Mississippi, and remained there teaching until the 1970s. Jones earned a Master’s degree in art education from the University of Mississippi (1971). He visited
Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, and the Republic of Benin (1974). Jones exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum; Atlanta Annuals, 1957, Many Years of Growth, honorable mention; American Negro Exposition, Chicago, 1940, New Orleans YMCA; Centennial Show of Black Progress, Chicago, 1964, Past, Present, Future, second place; and Augusta Savage Studios, NY, 1939. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, St Louis Art Museum, Jackson State University, MS.
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Nude (Blue Moon), 1957 oil on canvas 20 1/2 x 34 inches signed and dated $6,000-8,000
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LAWRENCE JONES (1910-1996)
Young Girl, 1956 casein on board 24 x 20 inches signed and dated partial label verso $3,000-5,000
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LAWRENCE JONES (1910-1996)
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LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905-1998) Lois Mailou Jones’ career spanned seven decades, and her paintings represented a variety of artistic techniques and themes as her style evolved. Her work remained consistent in her thoughtful use of color and strong sense of design, both of which were instilled in her through her extensive education at institutions such as the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Boston Normal Art School, and the Designer’s Art School of Boston. At the beginning of her career, Jones submitted textile designs through a white classmate that were used by major textile firms. She went to work at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina, helping to establish an art department. Professor James Herring was so impressed with her work, that he asked her to join the faculty at Howard University. Jones held a position here for the next 47 years. A number of her students went on to have extremely successful careers in art, including Elizabeth Catlett and David Driskell. In 1937, Jones went to Paris for a years sabbatical. She attended the Academie Julian and began painting plein air. She would continue to return to Paris throughout her life; like other African American artists of the time, she felt a freedom there that was profound. Jones found another spiritual home in Haiti. In 1954, she was invited to visit and paint the country’s
landscape and the people. The works she produced in this period are her most widely known works. Jones was equally at home painting French landscapes and figure studies. Her work is found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Metropolitan Museum, NY; and the National Palace, Haiti. The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, organized the exhibition Lois Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color in 2011. In 2013, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston held a show of 30 paintings and drawings showing her versatility and mastery of techinique. Her work was also included in the exhibition, I, Too, Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100, held at the Columbus Museum of Art, OH, in 2018.
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Cap-Haitien, 1979
watercolor on paper 18 3/4 x 23 3/4 inches signed, titled and dated Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $10,000-20,000
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LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905-1998)
The Bridge, 1938
watercolor and graphite on paper 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches signed, titled, and dated also signed and titled verso "The Bridge, Venice, Italy" Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $7,000-9,000
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LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905-1998)
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BARBARA JONES-HOGU (1938-2017) Recognized for her political, pro-Black images combining figuration with energetic, graphic lettering, Barbara Jones-Hogu is closely identified with a 1969/71 print titled, Unite. In recent years, the work has been featured in major group exhibitions documenting the contributions and expressions of African American artists during the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power eras, including Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, the seminal show organized by the Tate Modern in London. In January 2018, Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite 1968-1975, her first-ever solo museum exhibition opened at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago. Jones-Hogu was at the center of the black arts scene in 1960s Chicago. As a member of the Visual Artists Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), she helped paint the Wall of Respect on Chicago’s South Side in 1967. Paying tribute to more than 50 African American figures, the project is regarded as the first collective street mural in the United States. It revived the mural movement in neighborhoods across the nation, black ones in particular. Jones-Hogu later wrote that the Wall of Respect “became a visual symbol of Black nationalism and liberation.” In 1968, the year after contributing to the legendary mural, Jones-Hogu helped cofound AfriCOBRA, an artist collective with
Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004), Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, and Gerald Williams. (Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarrell were active in OBAC, too.) Initially called COBRA, then African COBRA, the group settled on the name AfriCOBRA, which stands for African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists. The collective focused on positive, powerful, and uplifting images of black people. The group held regular meetings in Jarrell’s studio and established a set of principles and a collective aesthetic. Their visual themes included syncopated, rhythmic repetition; balance between abstraction and absolute likeness; bright harmonious colors; and active lettering, which was Jones-Hogu’s contribution. In the wake of racism and injustice, AfriCOBRA produced work that put forth a visual counternarrative that was about affirmation of African American heritage. The goal was to change the community’s mindset and positively influence its outlook.
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Untitled, Nation Time, 1968
color screenprint on gold paperboard 23 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches signed in pencil from an edition of fewer than 10 impressions printed by the artist $7,000-9,000
Barbara Jones-Hogu’s prints were visually complex and in terms of subject matter focused on black women in the liberation movement, solidarity in the black community, and preserving the black family. Titles of her works include, Rise and Take Control (1970), Relate to Your Heritage (1970), and Black Men We Need You (circa 1971). The latter print is in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Other works have been placed with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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CLIFF JOSEPH (1922-2020) In The Dead Negotiate the Peace, the artist creates a compositional pinwheel of four ghostly figures, three white and one black. In the center of the painting is an olive leaf, the universal symbol for peace. It is unclear what the content of the specific negotiations are, or the identity of the negotiators, but the concept falls in line with many of Joseph’s themes throughout his body of work: enlightenment, if it comes at all, comes to us on the graves of past souls. By eliminating the possibility of orientation within the composition, Joseph makes the statement that all ways are equal: race, religion, gender, nationality… The artist understands that the solution, as well as its antithesis present themselves as equals: we either all live together or we will certainly all die together. Similarly to his message in the Baldwin-inspired, The Fire Next Time, the artist encourages taking responsibility for the effort needed to live in harmony and equality, but also warns that without that effort, we will all lose equally and the peace will only come to us in death.
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The Dead Negotiate the Peace, 1966 oil on board 20 x 16 inches signed; titled and dated verso
Illustrated: Cliff Joseph, Artist and Activist, Thom Pegg, Tyler Fine Art, 2018, pp. 54-55 Provenance: Ann Joseph, the artist's widow. $10,000-20,000
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RONALD JOSEPH (1910-1992) Ronald Joseph was born in St. Kitts and raised for ten years by foster parents on the island of Dominica. In 1921, he was brought to America where he finished his education. He received a scholarship to attend the Ethical Culture School, and before he even graduated, was exhibiting 60 charcoal watercolors and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Joseph went on to attend Pratt Institute, graduating in 1934. He joined the WPA working in the mural division and was involved with the Harlem Artists Guild where he learned printmaking from Riva Helfond along with Bob Blackburn. It was here that he came to know Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, and other African-American artists who were honing their craft. By the onset of the war, Joseph’s work had been featured in exhibitions at the Harlem Art Center; Baltimore Museum; Columbia University; Augusta Savage Studios; Library of Congress; Downtown Gallery, NY (American Negro Art), McMillen Inc., NY, (Negro Art: Contemporary); and the Albany Institute of History and Art, (The Negro Artist Comes of Age: A National Survey of Contemporary American Artists).
After serving in the war, Joseph received a Rosenwald Fellowship which allowed him to live and work in Peru, and then in Paris. He used the GI Bill to study at the Grand Chaumiere. After a lackluster return to New York, Joseph departed for Belgium, where he lived and worked for the majority of the rest of his life. Photo: The Crisis, March 1930, p. 99.
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The Conversation, c. 1940 tempera on board 34 x 26 inches signed $10,000-20,000
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JAMES DeWITT KING, Jr. (b. 1941) Sculptor/designer James DeWitt King was born in Chicago in 1941. As a teenager, he met artist Margaret Burroughs and became a regular visitor at her house which gave him the opportunity to meet and talk to artists of every medium. King was taking sculpture classes at the Art Institute every Saturday as well. He went on to major in architecture at Chicago’s Dunbar Vocational High School and after graduation went to Germany and Vienna. When he returned to Chicago, he met Richard Hunt and began to visit him at his studio. This experience of watching Richard work, rekindled my desire to become a sculptor. Later in my career it was his criticism that aided my growth.
Johnson and Charles McGee; the Detroit Artists Market (Seven Black Artists), and a traveling exhibition organized by the Illinois Arts Council (Black American Artists, 71.) He continued to make sculpture- working in steel and aluminum and later fiberglass and cardboard mixed with earth and color. King created a series of sculptures titled The Great Black Man. He completed commissions for private individuals including Mrs. Esther Gordy Edwards, of Motown Fame. “The Family as Dynasty”, depicted the saga of the Gordy family. REF: Black Art: An International Quarterly, v. 2, no. 4, James King’s Sculptural Exterior Forms, Jacqueline King, 1978.
In 1969 he moved to Detroit and received a commission from the Detroit Institute of Arts for an environmental play structure which was installed at the Merrill Palmer School. His work was also presented at the Pontiac Black Cultural Center, Oakland, MI along with fellow artists Lester
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Two Figures, 1992
bronze sculpture 18 1/2 inches (h) marble base, additional 4 inch cube; on a wooden, irregular-shaped base signed, dated, numbered, 2/30 (on bronze) $3,000-5,000
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GWENDOLYN KNIGHT (B. 1946) Knight was born in Barbados, West Indies. Her mother entrusted her to friends at the age of 7, and as a part of that family, she moved to St Louis, Missouri. Six years later, they moved to Harlem. She graduated high school in 1930 and attended Howard University for two years, but was forced to drop out due to financial hardship. She continued to work at the Harlem Community Art Center and was mentored by Augusta Savage. She also assisted Charles Alston in mural painting. She joined a WPA mural project in 1934 where she met her future husband, Jacob Lawrence. Josef Albers invited the couple to teach at Black Mountain College. Eventually they moved to Seattle, WA. Knight’s subjects are figurative, exploring the life, culture, and history of African Americans.
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New Orleans, 2002
lithograph 16 1/2 x 14 1/4 inches (image) signed, dated, titled, and numbered 46/100 Provenance: Workshop, Inc. Washington, D.C., Lou Stovall, Master Printer; Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $1,500-2,500
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000) Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1917 and raised in Philadelphia and Harlem. As a teenager, Lawrence had been uprooted from a childhood spent in Philadelphia when his mother brought her children to live with her in Harlem. She enrolled him in the after-school arts program directed by James Lesesne Wells. Lawrence’s mentor happened to be Charles Alston. He was able to create voraciously - he created elaborate paper mâché masks and three-dimensional models of Harlem. He read about master painters and focused his attention on patterns and colors. Lawrence began attending high school, but quit after two years, worked odd jobs, and completed a stint with the CCC digging ditches during the Depression. He re-discovered Alston who was now teaching in a WPA art center. Alston directed him to the Harlem Community Art Center, which was run by Augusta Savage. She was able to get him admitted as an easel painter by the time he turned 21. He eventually found studio space with fellow artists Ronald Joseph, Romare Bearden, and Claude McKay. Lawrence was a regular at Professor Charles Seifert’s discussions of African and African American history at the 135th St. branch of the NYPL. At Seifert’s request, he attended an exhibition of West African sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.
As an artist, Lawrence synthesized the events, meetings, discussions, experiences, and moments of his life onto the canvas and into his first narrative series (and the works to come). In 1936-38, he produced a series of works, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture. For him, it was not sufficient to produce one defining work on the life of such an important historical figure, so he created 41 paintings. Lawrence also created series on Frederick Douglass in 1939; Harriet Tubman, 1940; John Brown; and the Migration Series.
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In 1939 the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild sponsored an exhibition of his work at the Harlem YMCA - his first publicized one man show. The Toussaint L’Ouverture series was also shown at the Manhattan headquarters of the Catholic Interracial Council. Later, an entire room was set aside at the Baltimore Museum of Art for his series. This was unprecedented. Lawrence was well on his way to becoming the best known African American artist of his time. Lawrence won three successive Rosenwald Fellowships. With the second, he traveled through the South, experiencing both rural and urban life, the result of which was his Migration Series. It was at this time that Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery began representing him. During WWII, he served in the Coast Guard, and was assigned to the first racially integrated ship in US history. In 1946, he accepted an invitation from Josef Albers to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He taught at many schools throughout his career, including the Art Students League, New School for Social Research, Pratt Institute and the University of Washington in Seattle, where he eventually retired. Between 1986 and 1997, Lawrence created prints from The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture Series, which is now in the collection of the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University
in New Orleans. Lawrence translated 15 of these paintings into silk screen prints. At this later date, he was able change certain aspects of the work when adapting his original paintings to sets of silkscreen prints. The works were shown in the exhibition, To Preserve Their Freedom: Jacob Lawrence’s Toussaint L’Ouverture Serigraph Series, held at the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans in 2017. Recently, his work has been shown in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Jacob Lawrence and Black Mountain College, Black Mountain College Museum & Art Center, Asheville, NC, 2018-19 and I, Too, Sing America, Columbus Museum of Art, OH, 2018-19. The exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, was held at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2020. His work is found in the collections of MOMA, NY; National Academy of Design, NY; National Gallery, Washington D.C.; The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and many more.
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
Builders III, 1991
offset ithograph on Arches paper from photo aluminum plates; mylars hand drawn by artist edition of 90 with 25 AP, 8 PP 30 x 22 inches signed, dated, and numbered, 54/90 in pencil L91-1 Published and printed by Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia (Robert Franklin, master printer) Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia llustrated: Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, p. 53. In 1991 Lawrence received the James Van Der Zee Award, a national award presented annually by the Brandywine Workshop to distinguished African American artists. A special residency at the Offset Institute of the Brandywine Workshop was included among the awarded benefits. (Nesbett, 53) $5,000-7,000
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
Olympic Games, 1971
screenprint on Schoellers Parole paper from hand color-separated photo stencils 34 3/8 x 25 3/8 inches (image) 42 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches (sheet) edition of 200 signed, dated, numbered, 28/200 in pencil L71-1 Published by Bruckmann Verlag + Druck, Munich (Edition Olympia 1972); printed by Dietz Offizin, Lengmoos, Germany; distributed in the United Stated, Canada, and Japan by Kennedy Graphics, New York. Illustrated: Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, p. 26. This print was one of 28 by individual artists published by Edition Olympia on the occasion of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Lawrence created this image to commemorate the involvement of Black athletes in the Olympic games, track being an event in which Black athletes had traditionally excelled. But it also serves as a poignant, if indirect, reminder of Jesse Owen's triumphant victories in the 1936 Berlin Games. (Nesbett, 26) $5,500-7,500
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
Hiroshima, 1983
portfolio of eight silkscreen prints on Somerset paper through hand color-separated photo stencils 12 7/8 x 10 inches (image) 14 7/8 x 11 1/8 inches (sheet) each print signed and dated lower right numbered lower left in pencil Edition of 35 with 10 AP, 5 PP Screens destroyed L83-1 Published by the Limited Editions Club, NY; printed by Studio Heinrici, NY The portfolio includes a signed poem by Robert Penn Warren. Illustrated: Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, 42. Several years ago I was invited by the Limited Editions Club of New York to illustrate a book of my choosing from a list of the club's many titles. I selected the book Hiroshima, written by the brilliant writer John Hersey. The work was selected because of its power, insight, scope, and senstivity, as well as for its overall content. My intent was to illustrate a series of events that were taking place at the moment of the dropping of the bomb...August 6, 1945. The challenge for me was to execute eight works : a marketplace, a playground, a street scene, a park, farmers, a family scene, a man with birds, and a boy with a kite. Not a particular country, not a particular city, and not a particular people. (Nesbett, 42) $4,000-6,000
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)
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CLIFFORD LEE (1926-1985) Clifford Lee was a social-realist artist working in Chicago during the 1950s and 60s. He studied at the Grand Rapids Gallery (MI) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He worked primarily with a palette knife and his subject matter consisted of jazz musicians. Lee’s paintings were shown at the Englewood Concourse Commission (supported by the South Side Community Art Center and the Du Sable Museum of African American History), and the Hyde Park, Gold Coast and Lake Meadows Art Fairs. His work also appeared in Ebony magazine. Lee is included in Theresa Dickason Cederholm’s, Afro-American Artists, the 1974 Ebony Handbook and Falk’s Who’s Who in American Art.
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Horse Race, c. 1970 oil on canvas 20 x 13 1/2 inches signed $650-750
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HUGHIE LEE-SMITH (1915-1999) Lee-Smith was born in Eustis, Florida in 1915, and raised in Atlanta and Cleveland, Ohio. He knew from an early age that art was his mission. His mother encouraged his growing talent by enrolling him in an art class for gifted students at the Cleveland Museum of Art. At twenty years old, he won a Scholastic magazine competition that allowed him to study at the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. He also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938); and at Wayne State University (1952-1953), he studied art, theater, and dance. Throughout his career, he taught at several distinguished institutions including the Karamu House, Cleveland (late 1930’s), Princeton Country Day School, NJ (1963-65), Howard University, Washington D.C. (1969-1971), and the Art Student’s League, NYC (1972-1987). Lee-Smith was employed by the Ohio Works Progress Administration in 1938-1939. At this time, he did a series of lithographic prints and painted murals at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. The Cleveland Museum recognized him for drawing in 1938 and for printmaking in 1939-1940. His early works were shown mostly in Chicago and Detroit; at the South Side Community Art Center, the Snowdon Gallery, and the Detroit Artist’s Market. He was a regular exhibitor at the National Academy of Design between the years of 1959 and 1976. Despite many accolades and awards throughout his career, Lee-Smith did not enjoy
a major solo exhibition of his work until 50 years after he began painting. The retrospective was held at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton (1988). Just two years before his death, he was featured at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine, and in 1994, he was commissioned to paint the official City Hall portrait of former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1999 after a long illness. His work is included in many major collections including the South Side Community Art Center, Chicago; Howard University; the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Wayne State University. In 2013, the Muskegon Museum of Art in Michigan, organized a solo exhibition of his work from the 1930’s and 40’s titled, Hughie Lee-Smith: Meditations.
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Cliff Grass, c. 1950s oil on canvas 26 x 32 inches signed
label verso, Janet Nessler Gallery, New York with title indicated Illustrated: The Afro-American in Music and Art, International Library of Afro-American Life and History, Patterson, 1978, p.280. $30,000-50,000
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NORMAN LEWIS (1909-1979) Although Norman Lewis began his career predominantly as a social realist, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with the genre’s ability to manifest societal change. He began to explore abstraction in the mid-1940’s, developing a personal style consisting of a cast of calligraphic figures reminiscent of pictographs. From 1946 to 1964, Lewis was represented by the Willard Gallery, where he had six solo shows and participated in two group exhibitions. Like most African American artists of the time, he straddled two worlds, one of the African American artist, the other that of the abstractionist. He co-founded the Harlem Artist’s Guild, 1935 and the Spiral Group, 1963, as well as the Cinque Gallery. He was the only African American included in the Studio 35 sessions, organized by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline to define abstract expressionism. The Museum of Modern Art subsequently included his work in the exhibition, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America. Lewis’ first retrospective exhibition was held in 1976 at the Graduate Center of City
College, New York. His work is found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Studio Museum in Harlem; and Whitney Museum of American Art. His work was featured in the recent exhibition, Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, held in 2015 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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Untitled, Figures, 1965 oil on paper 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches signed and dated $20,000-30,000
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NORMAN LEWIS (1909-1979)
Untitled, 1951
pen and ink on paper 19 x 24 inches signed and dated $10,000-15,000
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NORMAN LEWIS (1909-1979)
Untitled, c. 1960
oil on paper 26 x 36 1/2 inches signed $25,000-35,000
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SAMELLA LEWIS (b. 1924) Over the course of a distinguished multifaceted career, artist, art historian, museum curator, and activist, Samella Sanders Lewis became a peerless advocate for African American involvement in the arts. While she works in a variety of media, Lewis is best known as a printmaker. Often utilizing the human figure, her oeuvre speaks to the struggle and strength of the African American community. Lewis began her education in her hometown of New Orleans, at Dillard University, but on the advice of her professor, Elizabeth Catlett, she transferred to Hampton University. After graduating, she taught at several universities and in 1968, Lewis became the education coordinator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a position she hoped to use to increase exhibition opportunities for black artists. Repeated clashes with museum administrators over the hiring of more staff of African descent led Lewis to resign. She would go on to establish three independent art galleries and, in 1976, founded the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles, where she served as senior curator until 1986. Soon after she left LACMA, Lewis began teaching at Scripps College in Claremont, California (1969–1984), and, in another first, became the college’s first tenured African
American professor. When she and fellow artist-scholar Ruth Waddy sought to publish their landmark two-volume guide on African American artists, Black Artists on Art (1969 and 1971), Lewis co-founded Contemporary Crafts Gallery, the first African American–owned art publishing house. She also founded the noted academic journal, International Review of African American Art, in 1976. REF: The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC.
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Creole Mules, 1995
color serigraph 20 x 24 1/2 inches signed, titled, and dated; numbered 6/60 The image, Creole Mules, was included in the 2002 exhibit at Scripps College, Samella Lewis: Paintings and Works on Paper, 1941-2000. $3,000-5,000
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LIONEL LOFTON (Contemporary) Lofton studied with John Biggers at Texas Southern University (Houston) and Clarence Talley at Prairie View A&M University (Prairie View). He has exhibited extensively from the 1980s to present, including at the Houston Art League, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Traveling Exhibition of Works by Texas Printmakers, 1995; African American Museum, Dallas, TX; Amon Carter Museum; Kinsey Collection Art Exhibition, Houston Museum of African American Culture; The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection: Works on Paper, Houston Museum of African American Culture. Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Forbes, 2008, p. 298.
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Flight Scope, 2019
acrylic and collage on board 18 x 12 inches signed; signed, titled, dated on verso $1,500-2,500
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AL LOVING (1935-2005) Al Loving was born in Detroit. His father was the first black teacher in Detroit’s public high schools and Loving, Sr. went on to become a professor and dean at the University of Michigan. Loving, Jr. studied first at Wayne State University and Flint Junior College (now Mott Community College), then the University of Illinois (BFA, 1963) and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MFA). Shortly after graduation, Loving moved to New York, and lived at the Hotel Chelsea (1968). He is the first African American artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1969). Unlike many African-American artists whose art focused on the racial politics of the era, Loving was a staunch abstractionist. His early works were built upon strict yet simple geometric shapes—often hexagonal or cubic modules. Inspired by Hans Hoffmann (who taught Loving’s mentor Al Mullen), Loving concentrated on the tension between flatness and spatial illusionism. In the 1970s the artist became disenchanted with his earlier, hardedge geometric paintings. Loving dispensed with notions of centralized composition, figure/ ground separation, and pictorial frame in his later torn canvas and collaged paper works. He combined hundreds of pieces of cut and torn canvas or paper into an abundance of overlapping patterns and shapes, their rich
and intuitive array of colors stretch irregularly, spiraling outward, surrounding the space, and engulfing the viewer. (REF: www.alloving.org) In an interview in the catalogue for The Appropriate Object, an exhibition of seven black artists at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1989, Mr. Loving spoke about his difficulty with the cube and his need to break out of a geometrical prison. In the early 1970s, Loving abandoned hardedge abstraction, and began creating fabric collages in the abstract expressionist style. He was influenced by an exhibition at the Whitney, Abstract Designs in American Quilts, and began working with sewn material fragments, much like Sam Gilliam. A decade later, he transitioned into using other materials, such as corrugated board and rag paper, torn by hand and reconstructed into circles and spirals. Each piece of cardboard is painted and placed overlapping to create the dynamic and continued composition. About this time (1988), Loving joined the faculty of the City University of New York. Loving’s work is included in the Detroit Institute of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
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Untitled (Abstract), 1984
acrylic and elements of collage on handmade paper 34 x 31-1/4 inches signed and dated Provenance: Collection of Julia E. Harris, Chicago, acquired directly from the artist $10,000-15,000
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RICHARD MAYHEW (B. 1924) Richard Mayhew was born in 1924 to parents of African American and Native American descent. He was educated at the Art Students League, NY; Brooklyn Museum Art School; and Pratt University, as well as receiving a degree in art history at Columbia University, NY. During this time, he studied under Edwin Dickinson, Reuben Tam, Hans Hofmann, and Max Beckmann. Mayhew was one of the founding members of the group Spiral, formed in 1963 by Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff. The group worked to address issues of civil rights and racial inequality through art. Mayhew’s first solo exhibition was held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1955 with a second solo exhibition held in 1957 at Morris Gallery, NY, both of which met with much critical success. His work has also been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Butler Institute of American Art, OH; High Museum of Art GA; and Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 2009, a retrospective of his work including paintings from the 1950’s through the
1970’s was held at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA. His work is found in the collections of Albion College, Michigan; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Evansville Museum, IN; Midtown Galleries, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
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Landscape
lithograph 9 1/2 x 13 inches signed, titled indistinctly, with AP in pencil $1,000-1,500
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WILLIAM MAJORS (1930-1982) Untitled, New York Series, 1968-1969 oil on canvas 58 x 72 inches unsigned
accompanied by a letter from Susan Stedman, the widow of the artist, confirming this work to be by her former husband. $80,000-120,000 *This work will be the focus of an upcoming essay written by the artist’s widow and executor of his estate, Susan Stedman, which will discuss a collection of re-discovered works from 1965-75 by Majors.
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NELSON MANDELA (1918-2013) The Struggle Series, 2001
five lithographs and one printed poem framed together 5 3/4 x 4 inches (each image) overall object: 18 x 42 inches signed and numbered, 6/125 $3,000-5,000 Catalog note: While Nelson Mandela is South African, his experience and his accomplishments resonate with African Americans. This work was part of a major colletction of African American art being offered in this sale.
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CHARLES MCGEE (1924-2021) McGee was born in South Carolina, but moved to Detroit when he was ten years old. He studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts (now the Center for Creative Studies) in Detroit. He also studied in Spain for a year. He was later an associate professor at Eastern Michigan University (1969-87) and had his own art school and gallery in the 1970s. McGee painted several murals, including The Blue Nile (1987) at the Detroit People Mover Broadway station. He helped found the Urban Wall Mural Program in Detroit in 1978, a community beautification project funded by the Michigan Council of Arts. There were a total of fifteen murals executed for this project in the 1970s and 80s. McGee also painted murals at the Martin Luther King Community Center and for Northern High School. McGee exhibited extensively and was included in the controversial Contemporary Black Artists in America held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971. Photo: Jarrett Begick
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Seated Woman, c. 1960
charcoal and graphite on paper 40 x 32 inches signed $20,000-30,000
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DON McILVAINE (1930-2005) Mural artist Don McIlvaine grew up in Washington DC where he attended Sunday morning art classes taught by Lois Mailou Jones. With her assistance, McIlvaine received a scholarship to attend Howard University. He went on to study at the Corcoran Art School and Newark Academy of Art before moving to Chicago in 1957. McIlvaine became the second director of the North Lawndale based gallery, Art & Soul in 1969-70. The gallery was a joint project between the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Conservative Vice Lords. McIlvaine worked with children to create murals in the area. In Fine’s, The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity (p 191) she writes: The activities, according to McIlvaine, help create a desire in youth to excel in life, to expand their goals, to relieve frustrations by expressing with various tools of art those expressions the heart alone sometimes cannot express.
Robin J. Dunitz, 2003, p. 66. This mural featured a figure of death carrying the Bible while chained to an African American who is clinging to the American flag. A black angel points to the African cultural symbol for dignity.
For more information on the Conservative Vice Lords: Lord Thing, directed by DeWitt Beall and released in 1970, from the Chicago Film Archives https://youtu.be/HaKNS9ypBUE
McIlvaine created six of his own murals during this time as well, one of which, titled Black Man’s Dilemma, is illustrated in Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride: African American Murals, James Prigoff and
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Untitled, 1951
oil on canvas 42 x 35 1/2 inches signed and dated 6/51 $4,000-6,000
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SAM MIDDLETON (1927-2015) Mixed media artist, Sam Middleton was one of a group of expatriate African Americans who enjoyed success in Europe in the 1960’s. Middleton was born in New York City and grew up in Harlem near the Savoy Ballroom. This notable venue provided much inspiration for his future collages. His love of music - classical and jazz - was integral to his very life - he was known to carry an unwieldy turntable and collection of records with him wherever he traveled. He joined the Merchant Marines in 1944. Upon his return to New York City in the 1950s, he relocated to Greenwich Village, meeting and befriending a small group of African American artists including Walter Williams, Clifford Jackson, Harvey Cropper, and Herb Gentry all of whom would expatriate to Europe in the next decade In the early 1950s, Middleton was part of New York’s Cedar Tavern scene, which included his friends Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Kline encouraged Middleton to apply to the John Hay Whitney Foundation and advised him to seek artistic success outside New York. Middleton received a scholarship for one year of study at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, otherwise he was largely self-taught. It was there in 1957, that he began experimenting with collage. His work was shown at Contemporary Arts Gallery in 1958 and again in 1960. The Whitney Museum of American Art showed four of his works in Young America 1960: Thirty American Painters Under 36. Between 1959 and 1961, Middleton lived in Europe, exhibiting in Spain, Sweden, and
Denmark. Much of his artistic material was gleaned from ephemera he collected as he moved from city to city. In 1962 he decided to make a home in the Netherlands. His later work brought the Dutch landscape into his collages. Middleton remained in the Netherlands for the rest of his life. He showed extensively there and other locales throughout Europe, but was not forgotten in the States. In 1970, his work was shown in the exhibition, Afro-American Artists Abroad at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin and in 1983, the Studio Museum in Harlem held the exhibition An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad which also included Herb Gentry, Cliff Jackson, and Walter Williams. His work is found in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL; Fisk University, Nashville, TN; Brooklyn Museum, NY, as well as many others. Photo: Middleton, Cliff Jackson, and Harvey Cropper in Stockholm, Sweden, 1960; Sam Middleton Estate. Unidentified photographer; © Sam Middleton Estate
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Untitled, Abstract, 1964 mixed media on paper 8 x 10 1/2 inches signed and dated $3,000-5,000
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LEV T. MILLS (b. 1940) Known primarily as a printmaker, Mills grew up in Florida, and studied at Florida A&M University. He earned his MA and MFA at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At Wisconsin, he studied with Dean Meeker, an accomplished printmaker himself. Mills’ subjects approach a social narrative, but he likes to leave room for interpretation. He places precedence on artistic issues and this is evident in the high level of craftsmanship in his work. The images are bold, but subtle—not heavy-handed. Mills studied abroad at the Slade School of Art in London on a fellowship. He participated in exhibits throughout Africa with the United States Information Agency program. Mills returned to the U.S. to Atlanta, to teach printmaking at Clark College, and later Spelman College. In the late 1960s-70s, Mills’ work consisted primarily of intaglios and silkscreen prints.
I am greatly influenced by the discovery of new materials that might be used to produce a work of art. It is necessary to define these components that make art meaningful as new media are produced. The ongoing effort of a “structuralist” is to struggle with forms—to build up, modify, tear down, and build up again before the resolution of a given work finally does take place.
Photo: Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics, Studio Museum in Harlem, 1980, p. 33.
-Lev T. Mills
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A Winner, 1972
color serigraph 28 x 22 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 18/50 $2,000-3,000
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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (b. 1933) Evangeline Juliet, “EJ” Montgomery was born in New York. Her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a homemaker. As a teenager, she discovered her affinity for creating art when she received a paint set as a gift. Montgomery graduated from Seward High School in New York City. In 1955, she moved to Los Angeles with her husband and studied at the Los Angeles City College (1955-58) and Cal Sate, Los Angeles (1958-62). Montgomery lived in Nigeria from 1962-1965. Upon her return, she earned a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1969. She also studied at UC Berkeley (1968-70). EJ worked as an artist in several mediums, including printmaking, painting, sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry design. She was also a very important administrator and advocate of African American art. She worked as a curator at the Oakland Museum from 1968-1974, and organized the retrospective show on the work of Sargent Johnson. Montgomery was impressed with Johnson’s work in enamel and successfully executed works of her own in that medium. Montgomery moved to Washington, D.C. in 1980 to work as a community affairs director
for WHMM-TV. Shortly thereafter, in 1983, she began working with the United States Department of State as a program development officer for the Arts America Program, organizing overseas exhibitions for American artists—including African American artists. Photo: The artist, 1973; Oakland Post Photograph Collection, MS 169, African American Museum and Library at Oakland, Oakland Public Library. Oakland, California.
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Dreaming of Violets, 2012
acrylic and metallic paints on canvas 36 x 24 inches signed; signed, titled, and dated verso $5,000-7,000
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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (b. 1933)
Untitled, c. 1970
ceramic vase 6 3/4 (h) x 10 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches initialed, EJM $500-700
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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (b. 1933)
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GUS NALL (1919-1995) Gus Nall studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris. Nall studied with Eldzier Cortor and was also influenced by fellow Chicagoan, Archibald Motley, Jr. His subjects were elongated human figures executed in a surrealist or cubist manner. In turn, Nall influenced the work of young writer and painter, Clarence Major, who met Nall at the Art Institute and gave Major lessons in his studio/apartment. Nall exhibited regularly during the 1950’s-60’s in popular art fairs around the city, much like many of the local painters, including fellow South Side painter, Gertrude Abercrombie. Margaret Burroughs praised Nall’s work in Art Gallery Magazine (April,1968) when she was asked to report on the Chicago African American art scene. Nall was also mentioned in Black Power in the Arts (Carol Myers, Cornell University, 1970). His most wellknown work, Lincoln Speaks to Freedmen on the Steps of the Capitol at Richmond (1963) was commissioned by the State of Illinois to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. This work is on permanent exhibit at the Du Sable Museum of African American History in Chicago.
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Untitled, Abstract Figures, c. 1970 oil on canvas 34 x 25 1/2 inches signed $800-1,200
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ROBERT NEAL (1916-1987) Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1916, Robert L. Neal was educated at Morehouse College and studied art under Hale Woodruff. He later served as his studio assistant at Spelman College and worked on his Amistad murals for Talladega College, where his responsibilities included transferring Woodruff’s drawings to the canvas and the installation of the canvases. Neal’s signature was found on the verso of the mural titled, Repatriation of the Freed Captives when it was restored for the exhibition Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College which was held at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA in 2012 and traveled throughout 2015. In Modern Negro Art, James Porter wrote, Other personalities of Woodruff’s school are Robert Neal and Albert Wells. Each distinctly bears the mark of Woodruff’s personal style and methods. Neal’s work was included in important exhibitions held at Atlanta University, 1937; High Art Museum (2nd prize, Tri-County Exhibit), 1939; Dillard University, New Orleans, LA, 1939; and the American
Negro Exposition, Tanner Art Galleries, Chicago, IL, 1940. Two of his works, Georgia Dwelling and Hills of Georgia are illustrated in The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art, published in 1979 by Alain Locke. In 2018, the Columbus Museum,GA, added the 1950 work titled Rearguard to their permanent collection.
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Portrait of a Woman, c. 1956
oil on canvas 40 x 29 inches signed; signed and dated verso $10,000-20,000
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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961) Marion Perkins was born in 1908 near Marche, Arkansas. When his parents died in 1916, he was sent to live with an aunt in Chicago. He attended Wendell Phillips High School in the Bronzeville area. Perkins quit school just before his senior year, married and started a family. His wife, Eva, was his muse and model for many of the feminine sculptures he created. Perkins owned a newspaper stand for many years and had aspirations to become a playwright for a short time. Sculpting was something he chose as a hobby in early days, and he was largely self taught. His work caught the eye of Margaret Burroughs, who was in his circle of friends, as well as Peter Pollack, gallery owner and administrator for the Illinois Art Project. The latter eventually became a patron and was instrumental in introducing him to Si Gordon. Gordon was an Illinois Art Project sculptor
and teacher who gave Perkins his first formal training in sculpting at the black YMCA at 38th and Wabash. Perkins showed his work there for the first time in 1938 as a part of a student show. In the 1940’s, Perkins grew rapidly as an artist, and by the end of the decade, his work demonstrated a clear personal aesthetic. His technique was conservative by many critic’s standards as abstraction was coming into vogue. Perkins process involved direct carving in stone or wood, a process that was favored by European Modernists like Constantin Brancusi, André Derain, and Modigliani. His politics also informed his work. Perkins was a committed Marxian activist and intellectual and “believed art could convey ideas effectively only through recognizable imagery.” Abstraction, in his views, was biased toward the elite, whereas figurative sculpture applied to all.
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Portrait of a Youth, c. 1950 oil on canvas board 20 x 16 inches signed
Provenance: the artist to a private collection, Chicago. $6,000-8,000
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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961)
Head of a Man, c. 1950
carved wood sculpture 21 x 8 1/2 x 10 inches (sculpture) on a painted wooden base, 4 x 11 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches, slightly recessed unsigned, but documented in a photograph with the artist, taken outside his home This is a rare and important work by the artist. Illustrated: Selections from the Art Institute of Chicago, African Americans in Art. Daniel Schulman's essay, "Marion Perkins: A Chicago Sculptor Rediscovered", p. 107. University of Washington Press, 1999. $40,000-60,000
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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961)
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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961)
Perkins gleaned much of the marble and sandstone he used for his sculptures from homes being wrecked in the Chicago area and worked in his backyard. In 1940, two of his sculptures were chosen to appear in the American Negro Exposition. His work appeared regularly in shows at the Art Institute of Chicago throughout the 1940’s and 50’s. In 1947 he received a Rosenwald Grant, and in 1948, he won 2nd prize at the 52nd Annual Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition held at the Art Institute of Chicago for his work, Ethiopia Awakening. He taught classes at the South Side Community Art Center and took a ceramics course at Hull House. By the 1950’s, Perkins’ work took on a more political tone. One of his most important works, Man of Sorrow, not only received a prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1951 Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition but was also purchased
for their collection. This work was notable for its portrayal of a black Christ - strong in its presence, yet clearly expressing his agony. In 1952, he won the Joseph Golde prize at the Art Institute of Chicago for Dying Soldier. His last work exhibited at the Art Institute in his lifetime was Unknown Political Prisoner in 1957. Perkins was quite direct with the political themes in his art and wrote about his convictions in the Marxist monthly, Masses & Mainstream. He had been planning a series of figures, a monument to Hiroshima called the Skywatchers series. Although he did execute a number of marble reliefs and works in plaster, the project remained in the “study” stage. Both Perkins and his wife died in 1961. REF: Schulman, Daniel. “Marion Perkins: A Chicago Sculptor Rediscovered.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 1999, p. 220-243+267-271
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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961)
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JAMES PHILLIPS (b. 1945) James Phillips graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art and was associated with the AfriCobra and Weusi groups in the late 1960s. In New York, he became acquainted with several popular jazz musicians, who inspired him to mimic the rhythms and moods within the music in his own art. Taliza Fleming writes of a work by Phillips: As evidenced in his 1966 painting The Dealer, Phillips began to incorporate jarring color combinations, sporadic zigzagging forms, and writhing compositions that alter the perception of reality. In similar fashion to the musical free jazz style of John Coltrane—an artist with whom Phillips was acquainted— The Dealer displays striking features of improvisation, layered rhythmic patterning, and violent bursts of colorful forms and accent. Narratives of African American Art and Identity, The David C. Driskell Collection, p. 130 Phillips was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (1971-72). He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; Howard University; American Center, Tokyo; and The Children’s Museum, New York as a solo artist; and in group shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Kenkeleba House, NYC; and the Selma Burke Center, Pittsburgh. His work is included
in the collections of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State office, NY; Hall of Justice, San Francisco, Fisk University Museum; Howard University; and the Schomburg Center, NY. It was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that Phillips’ paintings became architectonic and grid based. In these hard-edged geometric compositions, his African signs and symbols remain intact, and his painting style and technique are more calculated. The grids on the painting are obvious. At first glance shapes and patterns that are arranged asymmetrically appear to be random and non-repeating, but further examination reveals a deliberate, conscious, and well-balanced configuration. Regina Holden Jennings, St. James Guide to Black Artists
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Untitled, Abstract Composition, c. 1968 oil on board 28 x 23 inches signed $5,000-7,000
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DELILAH PIERCE (1904-1992) Inspired by nature and the world around us, colors, patterns, forms, shapes and spaces … my paintings have been an exploration of developing a visual language to communicate what I see and feel. As a painter, art educator, and activist, Delilah Pierce played an active role in the arts community of Washington DC. Born and raised in DC, she attended Howard University where she was taught by Lois Mailou Jones. Along with Alma Thomas, the group would make trips to Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard to paint. In 2015, the exhibition Delilah W. Pierce: Natural Perspective was presented by the University of Maryland University Arts College Program. Floyd Coleman, in his accompanying essay states: In distinctive gestural abstract expressionist paintings such as Gay Head Cliffs, Martha’s Vineyard, Pierce investigates scenes of water, sand and shore, rocks, land, and sky, captured with broad brush strokes loaded with paint and colors that are expressive and also achieve spatial and structural unity and balance. In the tradition of Cezanne and Georgia O’Keefe, Pierce is able to transform pedestrian still life subject matter into visual poetry. Although she was adept at straightforward figural and landscape works, Pierce shines in the exploration of nature and the myriad ways light and form interact with it.
Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Society of Washington Artists Annual Exhibition, 1959-1964; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1959, 1961; New Vistas in American Art, Howard University, 1961; Forever Free: Art by African American Women, 1862-1980, Hampton University, 1980; and Unbroken Circle: Exhibition of African American Artists of the 1930’s and 1940’s, Kenkeleba House, NY, 1986. Pierce’s work is found in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Georgetown University, Washington DC; Hampton Museum of Art, VA; Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, among others.
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Sails (Edgar Town Harbor, Mass.)
oil on canvas 49 1/4 x 50 inches signed; signed, titled and inscribed verso Provenance: The estate of Harriet Wilson Ellis, Chicago, Illinois Note: The photo on the left shows Pierce at the piano with this painting behind her. $15,000-20,000
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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984) Prentice Polk was born in Bessemer, Alabama. He studied photography at the Tuskegee Institute (1916-1920) with C.M. Battey and apprenticed with Fred Jensen in Chicago, Illinois (1922-1926). Jensen charged Polk $2.50 an hour and Polk was making $5.00 a day. Polk went door to door soliciting commissions for pictures of the neighborhood kids. That was a rough job during the Chicago winters, so he returned to Tuskegee in 1927 and opened his first studio. A year later he was hired to the faculty at Tuskegee Institute, and from 1933-1938 was the Head of the Photography Department. His work was exhibited at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Atlanta University, Birmingham Museum of Art, California Museum of African American Art, Emory University, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Tuskegee Institute, and the New York Museum of National History. Polk worked at Tuskegee from the late 1920s through the 1960s, capturing the significant cast of visitors to the school over the years on film. He also created more than 500 negatives of Dr. George Washington Carver at Tuskegee. REF: P.H. Polk, Pearl Cleage Lomax (essay), 1980.
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lot of two works Henry Baker, 1932 (printed in 1981, South Light) silver gelatin print 14 x 11 inches unsigned, documented
(with) Man Reading the Bible, 1927 (printed in 1981) silver gelatin print 9 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches signed by the artist $3,000-5,000
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CARL POPE (b. 1961) Carl Pope’s artistic practice is committed to the idea of art as a catalyst for individual and collective transformation. His photographic and multi media investigations of the socioeconomic landscape of Indianapolis earned critical acclaim at prestigious venues like the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. The installation The Black Community: An Ailing Body received support from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993. Pope frequently works in large-scale public art and collaborates with communities and cities to stimulate public dialogue and revitalization. He expanded his public art practice with projects in Hartford, Ct, Atlanta and New York for Black Male at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1996, Pope produced Palimpsest, a video/ writing project. Palimpsest, commissioned by the Wadsworth Athenaeum with grants from the Warhol and Lannan foundations, was included in the Whitney Biennial 2000 exhibition. Pope’s most recent installation of letterpress posters called The Bad Air Smelled of Roses explores the concept of Phenomenology as seen in the writings of Martin Heidigger, a German philosopher of the early 20th century. Pope uses the medium of letterpress posters because they represent a presumptuous idea--they seem official. People look at the printed posters as a source of information and even direction. What Pope offers, however, is misdirection, so the viewer is required to
reconsider. Another artist who explores phenomenology in a similar fashion is Shepard Fairey, with his OBEY THE GIANT propaganda campaign. Fairey created a fictional, but officiallooking image, presented via stickers and graffiti pasters, in an attempt to unbalance the viewer and provoke reflection. Most of Pope’s subject matter, or what he might be inclined to call, “anti-subject matter” is concerned with his identity as an African American. Borrowing from the writings of Alain Locke (The New Negro, 1925) and Hubert Harrison (The Voice) and his “New Negro Movement”, Pope questions the role and identity of the African American today. He accomplishes this, not by offering solutions or pre-supposed identities, but by questioning everything and being provocative---and then as Heidigger explained the usefulness of Phenomenology, “letting things manifest themselves”. Some people might find several of the messages offensive, but Pope challenges them to question the very perspective from which that reaction emanates.
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The Bad Air Smelled of Roses, 2007 lot of four letterpress posters on heavy card stock sizes average 19 x 14 inches signed
Literature: The Bad Air Smelled of Roses: Letterpress Posters by Carl Pope, Thom Pegg, 2014, Tyler Fine Art.
Exhibited: The Bad Air Smelled of Roses was recently on view in the exhibition WHO RU2 DAY: Mass Media and the Fine Art Print in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery through March 24, 2019. $800-1,200
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CHARLES ETHAN PORTER (1847-1923) One of the finest painters of fruit and floral still life compositions in America during the nineteenth century, Charles Ethan Porter, was the first African American admitted into the National Academy of Design in New York. Porter also studied at L’École des Arts Decoratifs in Paris,1881, where he began exploring Impressionism and landscape painting. Mark Twain, a patron of his, helped Porter to secure a place at the school by writing a letter of introduction. Until the very end of his career, Porter had been able to support himself with his earnings as an artist. However, according to the Hartford Black History Project, Porter shared a studio in Rockville, Connecticut with Bavarian artist Gustave Hoffman, who sold Porter’s paintings door-to-door because people would not buy art from a black artist. Porter died poor and in relative obscurity. His work has since found a place in the collections of such major museums as the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; San Antonio Museum of Art, TX; and Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. In 1987, Connecticut Gallery organized a retrospective which secured Porter’s rightful place into the history of American art. A traveling retrospective of Charles Ethan Porter’s work was organized by Hildegard Cummings and the New Britain Museum of American Art in 2008.
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Autumn Landscape with Pumpkins and Haystacks, 1892 oil on canvas 17 x 23 inches signed $5,000-7,000
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MAVIS PUSEY (1928-2019) Mavis Pusey was best known for her hardedge, non-representational images. This was very much her singular focus throughout her entire career. Pusey was born in Jamaica in 1928. Her parents died when she was young. An aunt taught her to sew, and her first job was cutting fabric in a garment factory in Kingston, Jamaica. When she was 18, Pusey went to NY to study at the Traphagen School of Fashion. Due to financial constraints she began attending classes at the Art Students League instead, where she studied painting and printmaking over the next four years. One of her teachers was Will Barnet. When her student visa expired, Pusey went to London, and then Paris, where her first solo exhibition was held at Galerie Louis Soulanges in 1968. When she returned to NY, her work Dejyqea (oil/canvas, 72 x 60 in.) was included in the important exhibition, Contemporary Black Artists in America, held in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. She worked with Robert Blackburn at his workshop for three years and was struck by the energy and constant movement of the city. Many of her prints from this period reflect a focused interest on the city’s construction. Pusey also taught at various institutions throughout her career including Rutgers University and the New School for Social Research. She moved to Virginia later in her career.
In 2017, her work was included in the exhibition, Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. It was the first U.S. presentation dedicated exclusively to the formal and historical dialogue of abstraction by women artists of color. Her work will also be the subject of a major exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. Pusey’s work is found in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL.
I am inspired by the energy and the beat of the construction and demolition of these buildings. The tempo and movement mold into a synthesis and, for me, become another aesthetic of abstraction. I use color and texture to convey the tension that is the heartbeat of the city… I see the new construction as a rebirth, a catalyst for a new environment, and since the past must be a link to the future, in each of my works…. there is a circle to depict the never-ending continuation of natural order and all matter. -Mavis Pusey
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Untitled, abstract, c. 1968 watercolor on paper 11 x 13 1/2 inches signed twice in pencil nicely framed $3,500-4,500
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ROBERT DENNIS REID (1924-2002) African American painter and fine arts professor Robert Dennis Reid was born in Atlanta, GA. He studied at Clark College, GA; Art Institute of Chicago; and Parsons New School of Design, NY. Reid worked as a fashion illustrator and taught fashion illustration, drawing and design at the Rhode Island School of Design. His first one man show was held at Grand Central Moderns, NY in 1965, and featured paintings that tended “toward poetic imagery, projecting forms and symbols that have little to do with nature.” (The Afro-American Artist, Fine, p. 215). Reid’s exploration in oils, watercolor, and later, collage, tended towards the abstract. His background in illustration, led him to be incredibly adept at his approach to watercolor. “Despite disparate elements, “ Harry Henderson writes in St. James Guide to Black Artists, p.450, “Reid achieves an acute sense of balance that is both vertical and horizontal. Color is the critical element he uses to achieve this balance, and he is very sensitive to the order in which each color is laid down. Reid credits Byzantine art and the Book of Hours with influencing his concept of balance.”
represented by Alonzo Gallery in the 1970s and exhibited at June Kelly Gallery in the 1990’s. His work was featured in the group exhibitions Ten Negro Artists from the United States/ Dix Artistes negres des Etats-Unis, Washington DC, 1966; Four Artists, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, 1969; Black American Artists/71, Chicago, IL, 1971; Black Artists/South, Huntsville Museum of Art, AL, 1979; 30 Contemporary Black Artists, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1968; Black Artists: Two Generations, Newark Museum, NJ, 1971; and The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975, Kenkeleba House, NY.
In addition to solo exhibitions at Grand Central Moderns, he was also
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Pour Nice, 1962
oil and collage on canvas 24 x 18 inches signed, dated, titled $4,000-6,000
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ROBERT DENNIS REID (1924-2002)
Untitled, 1974
watercolor on paper 22 x 17 inches (sheet) signed and dated in pencil $600-800
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ROBERT DENNIS REID (1924-2002)
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JOHN RIDDLE (1934-2002) Los Angeles native John Riddle became known initially for his politically charged works that combined welded steel and debris left from the WATTS riots in 1965 the purpose for which was to expose the harsh conditions that African Americans lived and labored in South Central L.A. Later in his career, after moving to Atlanta, Georgia, he began to work on low relief assemblages, prints and paintings, which, with their solid color, angular shapes recalled the work of Jacob Lawrence and allowed viewers a glimpse of African American culture. Riddle earned his Associate’s degree from Los Angeles City College, and then served in the US Air Force from 1953-1957. After leaving the military, he was able to earn his BA from California State University, Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1966. He continued there to earn his MFA in 1973. Like his mentor Noah Purifoy... Riddle was deeply affected by the physical aftermath of the [Watts] riots and created assemblage works from the torched metal junk that was piled everywhere. His sculpture Ghetto Merchant (1966) was pieced together from a destroyed cash register that Riddle found in the wreckage,
picked apart down to its barest skeleton, and then mounted on metal legs that he had scavenged from a junkyard. Although its parts betray a pained history, the sculpture possesses a lyricism of form that clearly draws from early twentieth-century abstraction in its emphasis on line and geometry.
- Andrea Gyorody, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, p. 212. Catalog accompanying the exhibition at The Getty, 2011 Riddle’s work, Gradual Troop Withdrawal (1970)l, was included in Soul of a Nation Art in the Age of Black Power (the leg of the exhibit at The Broad). His work may be found in the collections of the Oakland Museum, High Museum of Art, and the California African American Museum.
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Civil Rights, 1984
serigraph 26 3/4 x 20 inches (image) 29 x 23 1/8 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated and numbered 185/200 in pencil $1,000-2,000
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JOHN RIDDLE (1934-2002)
The Ballot, 1986
color serigraph 26 1/2 x 20 3/4 inches (image) 29 x 23 inches (sheet) signed, "J. Riddle" and "J. Alexander", numbered 29/200 and dated in pencil $1,500-2,500
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JOHN RIDDLE (1934-2002)
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FAITH RINGGOLD (b. 1930) Ringgold was born in Harlem and lived an entire life before beginning her life as an artist: she grew up and married a jazz musician, raised two children, divorced, and then finished her education at the City College of New York (BS, 1955 and MFA, 1959). She was the youngest daughter of Andrew and Willi Posey Jones, and they lived on West 140th Street. Faith was an excellent student and was also a very talented artist, albeit that was never explored formally. In fact, she had little encouragement from her school teachers. She had hoped to attend the High School of Music and Art in NYC, but she was never told about the process for applying. She ended up at George Washington High School, which did have high academic standards, but practiced institutional racism. Black students were never given the same opportunities as whites, even though sometimes the administration claimed it was strategic because the black kids would fail setting their sights too high. When she graduated she knew she wanted to study art, and hoped to go to Pratt, but because her older sister was already attending NYU, finances were strained. She settled on CCNY. In 1961, she traveled to Europe for a summer with her daughters and her mother. She re-married (Burdette Ringgold) who was very encouraging regarding her art. In the 1960s, her work was politically charged. In the 1970s, she shifted in subject and medium choices. Her subject matter became contemporary black culture in America and the common person. She began using craft-type materials as a statement of feminism because many
women were at home making crafts with their families. She began making masks and dolls. Her mother was the well known fashion designer, Willi Posey. The art of quilting and dressmaking was passed down through Ringgold’s family. She also began experimenting with performance art. In 1980, Ringgold collaborated with her mother to make her first quilt, Echoes of Harlem. She chose quilt-making because that practice was allowed to slaves, with their owners unaware that the practice developed and preserved African culture. Ringgold has used the flag symbolism throughout her career, sometimes making a very harsh statement. Perhaps taking all the images into consideration along with this image, we can assume the flag for Ringgold has always symbolized an idealized freedom—but whether people live up to it or not is another matter. Perhaps the taking of the knee during the sporting events is not about disrespecting the flag but about being disappointed in people not living up to what it symbolizes. Freedom for ALL.
Photo: Jill Mead/ The Guardian
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Nobody Will Ever Love You Like I Do, 2006 color silkscreen print edition of 50 25 x 19 inches (image) 30 x 22 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, numbered in pencil $3,000-5,000
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FAITH RINGGOLD (b. 1930)
Groovin High, 1996
color silkscreen print 24 1/4 x 39 1/4 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered, PP 14/25 (from an edition of 425) in pencil $3,000-5,000
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FAITH RINGGOLD (b. 1930)
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JOHN ROZELLE (b. 1944) A native of St. Louis, Missouri, John Rozelle is a prolific painter and collagist. Rozelle attended Washington University, St. Louis, where he received a BFA and Fontbonne College, where he received a MFA. He served as an associate professor in the Drawing and Painting Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1990-2009. Prior to joining the Art Institute faculty he taught drawing, design, painting, and sculpture at Fontbonne College. In 1989, Rozelle was artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work has been featured in exhibitions including I Remember...Thirty Years After the March on Washington: Images of the Civil Rights Movement 1963-1993, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1993; The Chemistry of Color: African American Artists in Philadelphia, 1970-1990, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, 2005; Layers of Meaning: Collage and Abstraction in the Late 20th Century, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, 2003; The Studio Museum in Harlem: 25 Years of African-American Art, NY, 1994; African American Abstraction: St. Louis Connections, MO, 2008. In 1998, Rozelle was commissioned to install the Middle Passage Project at the Dred Scott Courthouse in St. Louis, MO. Museum collections include the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA; Margaret Harwell Museum, Spertus Museum of Jewish Studies, Chicago, IL; The Studio Museum in Harlem,
NY; California Afro-American Museum, Los Angeles; and The Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles. ... As an artist, Rozelle seems to have zeroed in on this uncompromising balance, one which allows him to cite influences of all kinds without having to suppress personal and cultural history. His intricate collages, products of a fertile imagination and a skilled hand appeal to us not because they are from the mind of a black artist; they appeal to us solely on the grounds that they come from a gifted artist. -Jeff Daniel, critic for the St Louis Post-Dispatch Photo: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1996, p. 22
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Middle Passage Series, 1990 acrylic with applied rope, cloth, stitching, paperboard sculpted to look like a manacle 48 x 48 inches signed verso Provenance: collection of the artist, to private collection, St Louis, MO. $8,000-10,000
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MAHLER B. RYDER (1932-1997) Ryder studied at Ohio State University, College of Fine and Applied Arts, Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts, NY. He was a jazz musician and visual artist. He was born in Columbus, Ohio and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design (beginning in 1969). He was a founder of the Studio Museum in Harlem and served as executive secretary from 1966-67. Ryder exhibited in a one-man show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973, as well as the High Museum, Everson Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and many other venues throughout the 1960s-70s. He often made abstracted collages related to music. Ryder died of cancer at only 54 years old. REF: African American Art and Artists, Lewis; Afro-American Artists, Cederholm; obit, NY Times, (March 4, 1992)
This is a very early work by the artist, prior to his becoming more of an abstractionist, and was a gift to a friend.
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Untitled, Portrait, 1959
oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches signed; signed and dated verso Provenance: personal friend of the artist, private collection, Cincinnati, OH
This rare, early work was executed shortly after Ryder graduated, and prior to moving into primarily abstraction. $2,500-3,500
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BETYE SAAR (b. 1926 ) Saar was born in Los Angeles, and moved with her family to Pasadena in the early 1930s. She first studied design at Pasadena City College and interior design at UCLA. This strong design-centered background would prove to be highly influential in her mature work in fine art. She was close friends with two other L.A. artists, Curtis Tann and William Pajaud. Saar and Tann actually started an enamel design business which was featured in Ebony in 1951. After graduating, from the late 50s through the mid-1960s, Saar was primarily interested in print-making, producing color etchings and intaglio prints. During the turmoil of the 1960s, the Watts riots, and the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Saar’s work began to shift to collage and assemblage, reclaiming and repurposing personal objects she inherited as well as negatively-charged objects she found at LA flea markets. She believed that a universality of international culture could be connected by reclaiming objects and artifacts from other cultures to be used in her own constructs of perspective. She was inspired further by a visit to a retrospective exhibition of Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967. Saar comments:
Saar exhibited extensively throughout the 1970s and on, including: Whitney Museum of American Art, NY;Wadsworth Athenaeum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Studio Museum in Harlem; MOCA, Los Angeles; University of Connecticut, Hartford; Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the National Gallery, Washington D.C. Her work is in numerous important public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum, NY; MOMA, NY; The Oakland Museum, CA; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA.
There has been an apparent thread in my art that weaves from my early prints of the 1960s through later collages and assemblages and ties into the current installations. I am intrigued with combining the remnants of memories, fragments of relics, and ordinary objects with the component of technology. It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously. The art itself becomes the bridge.
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Untitled, Butterfly, c. 1976
double-sided multi-media collage on card stock 5 x 4 inches signed and dated Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $6,000-8,000
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MARION SAMPLER (1920-1998) Marion Sampler was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1920 and attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati, OH; Jepson Art Institute, Los Angeles; and USC, Los Angeles. In addition to art, Sampler pursued a career as a graphic designer for the architectural firm Gruen Associates, Los Angeles, where he eventually became an associate. He was one of the first African American architectural designers in Los Angeles. In an interview with the Sacramento Bee in 1969, Sampler described his work as “designing pleasing looking cities…loaded with art of all shapes and qualities,” and to that effect, he was responsible for designing the stained glass kaleidoscope skylight for South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, CA in 1974.
Photo: Marion Sampler (far right) and members of the League of Allied Arts, California Eagle, Los Angeles, CA, June 20, 1957; p. 7.
Sampler participated in many exhibitions in the Los Angeles area and was included in Samella Lewis’s African American Art and Artists and Black Dimensions in Contemporary American Art, 1971 (film and book). Recently, his work was shown in the 2012 exhibition, Place of Validation: Art and Progression at the California African American Museum, LA. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY as well as the California African American Museum. REF: Sacramento Bee, Nov. 21, 1969, p. 22.
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Untitled, 1967
mixed media construction on cardboard 14 x 12 inches signed and dated $2,000-3,000
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WALTER SANFORD (1912-1987) Born in Detroit in 1912, Walter Sanford moved to Chicago to pursue formal art training at the Art Institute of Chicago under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He also spent a year at Detroit’s School of Arts and Crafts under John Carroll. Throughout his career he drew much inspiration from Chicago’s South Side, where he resided for many years. Sanford can be counted among the second wave of artists emerging from the Chicago Renaissance between 1941 and 1960. While he embraced a wide range of styles from naturalism to abstraction, he considered himself an abstract expressionist. By the 1950’s, his work was clearly influenced by Picasso. His tenure in Chicago was punctuated by travels to Las Vegas, Mexico, and France. In 1952, he received the Prix de Paris.
inspired by the work of Mexican painters David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. Sanford has exhibited in more than 20 major shows and had more than two dozen solo exhibitions.
Later in his career, he established a studio in Chicago where he began working on a series of portraits of real and imaginary figures
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Madison Avenue Near Canal, 1953
oil on illustration board 9 x 7 inches signed and dated; signed and titled verso $1,000-2,000
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WALTER SANFORD (1912-1987)
Dice Game, 1951 acrylic on board 19 x 14 inches signed and dated original frame $1,000-2,000
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WALTER SANFORD (1912-1987)
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WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT (1884-1964) Scott was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, one of two children of Caroline Russell and Edward Miles Scott. His introduction to formal art training came at the Manual High School in Indianapolis, where he studied with Otto Stark, one of the Hoosier Group artists. Encouraged by Stark, Scott went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 1907 (although he continued classes for two additional years). As an upperclassman, Scott was awarded mural commissions at local schools and won the Magnus Brand Memorial Prize for three consecutive years, and these financial success provided him with the finances to travel abroad. He traveled to Paris, where he met and spent time under the tutelage of Henry O. Tanner. Scott enrolled as a student at the Académie Julian, and had works accepted at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Francais in Paris, the second African-American after Tanner to do so. His work in Europe focused on French genre scenes, especially peasant life. He was invited to exhibit at the Paris Salon in 1912 and 1913. When he returned to the States, he applied this French academic tradition to genre scenes painted of southern African Americans. Scott also painted portraits of important African American figures Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver and illustrated several covers for The Crisis. In 1927, Scott was awarded the Distinguished
Achievement award from the Harmon Foundation, and four years later, he received the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship to study and paint in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He spent over a year here and completed over 144 works depicting peasant life. After his return, he painted murals celebrating African American history and culture. Throughout his career, Scott remained devoted to traditional, academic methods of painting and realistic style. His work may be found in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Du Sable Museum of African American History; New York Public Library; National Gallery of Art; Guggenheim Museum; Columbus Museum, GA; and Fisk University. REF: A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Harriet Warkel and William Taylor, 1996.
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Rural Scene, c. 1930 oil on board 13 x 16 inches signed
Provenance: Marie Young, San Rafael, CA ; Leslie Hindman Auction, 9/26/06 lot 90; Private collection, Richmond, Virginia.
$5,000-7,000
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WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT (1884-1964)
Haitian Landscape, c. 1930 oil on board 18 x 14 inches unsigned with Mountains and Deer , c. 1930 oil on board 18 x 14 inches signed
Provenance: The artist; Williamay and Arthur Jackson, Chicago; Phyllis Jones (niece of Ms. Jackson). Phyllis Jones is the sister-in-law of Barbara Jones-Hogu. $3,000-5,000
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WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT (1884-1964)
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CHARLES SEARLES (1937-2004) Born in Philadelphia in 1937, artist and educator Charles Searles held a careerlong interest in African tribal arts--he first incorporated mask forms and colors from Africa in these late 1960s and early ‘70s figurative paintings. By 1971, Searles had risen to prominence with the inclusion of his 1970 painting, News, in the exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Searles studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, graduating with honors, and later taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for 19 years. His works are found in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Montclair Museum of Art, Montclair, NJ; Dallas Museum of Art; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, Philadelphia; and Howard University.
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Red Tail, 1992
shaped paper collage with applied acrylic on paper board 17 x 16 inches (board size) housed in a Plexiglass shadowbox, 24 1/2 x 24 1/2 signed, titled, and dated label from Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, PA verso Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $1,500-2,500
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• 317
CHARLES SEBREE (1914-1985) Charles Sebree was born and raised in Kentucky until the age of ten, when he and his mother moved north to Chicago. By the age of 14 he was carving out his own rough existence in the midst of the Great Depression. At this time, the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago featured his drawing, Seated Boy on the cover of their magazine. He went on to train formally at the Chicago School of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago and used his interests in European modernism and African sculpture to forge his own individual style; one which evoked a mystical quality similar to old world Byzantine enamels and Russian icon paintings. He was the only African American artist represented by Katherine Kuh among a group which consisted of a majority of leading European modernists. Between 1936 and 1938 Sebree worked for the WPA easel division, participated in the South Side Community Arts Center, and was involved with the Cube Theater. He maintained a strong interest in the theater due to his friendship with Katherine Dunham. Guided by her influence, he explored set and costume design, theatrical production, writing, and dance, while continuing to paint. Sebree was also close with a group of bohemian artists from Chicago and Wisconsin, which included Magic Realist painters Gertrude Abercrombie, John Pratt, John Wilde, Karl Priebe, and others. Sebree began writing plays in earnest
in 1949- his most well received work was Mrs. Patterson, which opened on Broadway in 1954 starring none other than Eartha Kitt. In addition to all of his creative endeavors, Sebree also collaborated with Harlem Renaissance author Countee Cullen by illustrating his narrative poem, The Lost Zoo (A Rhyme for the Young But Not Too Young). Sebree’s work has been featured in multiple exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and was also featured at Katharine Kuh Galleries, Chicago Artists Group Galleries, American Negro Exposition, South Side Community Art Center, Howard University, Chicago Public Library, Kenkeleba House, and the Woodmere Art Museum. His work is found in many prominent collections including Howard University, Smithsonian American Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and University of Chicago.
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Saltimbanque, c. 1950 gouache on paper 15 x 10 1/2 inches signed $2,500-3,500
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JOE SELBY (1893-1960) Joe Selby was born in Mobile, Alabama. He painted in Miami, Florida from the 1920s to the 1950s. As a boy he worked as a deck hand on tugboats; in 1905 at age twelve he was involved in a tragic accident when his leg was mangled in a line-handling accident. The accident ended his career as a deckhand, so Selby turned to painting ship portraits. He painted all types of boats, but primarily yachts, approaching owners at the Miami city pier to ask if they wanted a portrait of their boat. If the owner agreed, Selby boarded the vessel to take notes and make measurements, then returned to a fire station near the dock where he would commence on the portrait. Early in his painting career (1920s-30s), Selby worked in Baltimore and painted boats on the Chesapeake Bay. Over the years his clients included General Motors magnates Alfred P. Sloan and Charles Kettering, Axel Wennegren, Arthur James Curtis, William B. Leeds, and members of the Morgan and Rockefeller families. Selby lived much of his life in public housing in Miami's Overtown district before constructing his own home. His last dated painting was in 1959. His work is in the collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St Michaels, MD. REF: Roger King Fine Art A short film about the work of Joe Selby. Photo: Miami Herald, Feb 21, 1959, p. 29.
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Mascotte, 1935
oil on masonite 14 x 24 inches signed and dated Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $3,000-5,000
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JOE SELBY (1893-1960)
Deep Water II, c. 1935 oil on board 14 x 18 inches signed
Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $2,000-4,000
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JOE SELBY (1893-1960)
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• 323
THOMAS SILLS (1914-2000) African American abstract expressionist artist Thomas Sills was born in Castalia, North Carolina in 1914 and began painting in 1952 at the age of 38. In 1957 he won the prestigious William and Noma Copley Foundation Award and held solo exhibitions at the Betty Parsons Gallery, NY; Paul Kantor Gallery, CA; and Bodley Gallery, NY. His work was also included in many group exhibitions including the Fourth Annual Artists Annual at Stable Gallery, NY. The Stable Gallery was the center of Abstract Expressionism in New York City in the 1950’s and home to artists Robert Indiana, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, Willem deKooning, Andy Warhol, and Lee Krasner. Click here for a short video of Thomas Sills explaining his process in the film, Black Artists in America, v.3 which was produced in 1973 by Dr. Oakley N. Holmes.
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Untitled, c. 1970
oil and benzene on canvas 24 x 36 inches signed partial artist's label verso $7,000-9,000
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WALTER SIMON (1916-1979) Painter and educator Walter Simon, attended Pratt Institute, the National Academy of Fine Art, and two stints at New York University After serving in WWII, he used the GI Bill to return to NYU, where he met Hale Woodruff who became a mentor. Hale…struck Simon as totally informal, warm and well informed. One day Simon was defending something he had painted. By way of comment, Hale spoke of the modern spirit. Its here; there’s no use to argue against it, he said quietly. This did it for Simon. The observation was so simply put and so unanswerable. L.D. Reddick, Walter Simon: The Socialization of an American Negro Artist, Phylon, v. 15, no. 4, p. 388. Simon and his family lived at 715 Washington St. in Greenwich Village. His home became a salon of “painters, writers, political idealists, art patrons, and ordinary working-class neighbors.” It was here that his figurative works transitioned to abstraction. Woodruff encouraged Simon to teach at the Atlanta University Summer School. While there, his work was regularly shown at the Atlanta University Exhibitions of Paintings, Sculptures, and Prints by Negro Artists, 1949, 1951-53, and 1959. He taught at Savannah State and Virginia State College before returning to NYC.
In the 1960’s, Simon was a foreign service officer with the United States Information Agency and served as a cultural attache in Cairo; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Colombo (Ceylon), Sri Lanka. His work is found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Atlanta University.
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The Iron Eagle, 1960 oil on canvas 36 x 40 inches signed
label verso: Montclair Museum 29th Annual New Jersey State Exhibition $4,000-6,000
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LORNA SIMPSON (b. 1960) Simpson is an American artist best known for her black-and-white photographs and works on paper which explore the interplay between historical memory, culture, and identity, using her own experiences as a Black woman to inspire her work. She studied at the University of California, San Diego in the mid 1980s where she began to question the implied truth of documentary photography, which led to her photography becoming more conceptual. In 1990, she was the first African American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, as well as the first African American woman to have a solo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (Projects 23). From the Guggenheim Museum: “Using African American women as her models, and sometimes African American men, Simpson creates tableaux that utilize repetition and pictorial framing to challenge cultural and historical conceptions of gender and race.” Beginning in the 1990s Simpson began printing on felt instead of photographic paper. The unique work offered here utilizes this process giving the images a tactile quality that changes our assumptions about the medium of photography itself. Created specifically for a New Museum benefit and executed in 1994, this work draws from her larger Wigs series, examples of which have been exhibited the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1990, Simpson was the first African American woman to have her work shown at the Venice Biennale. She has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Miami Art Museum; the Whitney Museum of Art; and many others. In 1991 she was the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and received the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award in 2010. Simpson lives and works in Brooklyn.
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Wigs (New Museum Configuration), 1994 waterless lithograph on felt (1/8" thickness) 5 pieces, overall dimensions variable (large 31 1/2 x 16 inches) (small 22 1/2 x 18 1/4 inches) each signed, dated, and titled in pencil verso by the artist Installed (simulating the New Museum installation), the five components encompass about 58" square on the wall. This unique configuration of the artist's Wigs was created for a benefit auction for the New Museum in 1994. Provenance: Private collection, New York, New York $20,000-30,000
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MERTON SIMPSON (1928-2013) Painter, jazz musician, and gallerist Merton Simpson was born in Charleston, South Carolina and educated at the Cooper Union Art School and New York University, where he met and worked with Hale Woodruff, Robert Motherwell, and William Baziotes. Simpson was recognized by the Guggenheim Museum in their Younger American Painters exhibition in 1954, and in 1955 held his first one man show in New York City at Bertha Schaefer Gallery. Throughout his long and storied career, he was a committed abstract expressionist whose work was a synthesis of his experiences - travel in Europe, West Africa, and as a member of the United States Air Force; jazz music, and his profound love of African sculpture. He founded the Merton D. Simpson Gallery of Primitive and Modern Art in 1954 which remained in operation for 59 years until his death in 2013. In, The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity, Elsa Honig Fine writes: Simpson used a mixed bag of materials to gain texture for his large canvases-canvas strips on boards, glue-soaked pieces of brown paper bags, newsprint, and thickly applied, heavily glazed pigment. His work in the late fifties consisted mainly of landscapes and seascapes in the romantic Abstract Expressionist tradition, with a suggestion of (Albert Pinkham) Ryder’s influence. His colors were muted grays, blues, and browns. (p. 250) Simpson was a member of Spiral along with Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, and Hale Woodruff. The Spiral collective originally formed in response to the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, which drew nearly a quarter of a million advocates for racial equality, and marked a critical turning point in the American civil rights movement. This, and the Harlem riots of 1964 led to his creation of the Confrontation series, a theme he continued to revisit until the end of 1970. His work has been included in many important exhibitions, including The Evolution of AfroAmerican Artists, 1800-1950, City College, NY, 1967; Tradition and Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade 1963-1973, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1985; Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, 2014; The Spiral, Christopher Street Gallery, NY, 1964; and Abstraction + Abstraction, Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba House, NY, 2010. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Gibbes Museum of Art, SC; and the Johnson Collection, SC. Photo: Black Art: An International Quarterly, Lewis, v. 3. no. 2, p. 21.
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Nightscape, 1960 acrylic on canvas 50 x 40 inches signed and dated $5,000-7,000
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ALBERT ALEXANDER SMITH (1896-1940) Albert Alexander Smith was a painter and printmaker whose style varied from straight forward portraits and European scenes, to lively depictions of the African American community and examinations of social injustice. Smith was born in 1896 in New York City, the only child of immigrants from Bermuda. After graduating from traditional high school, he began studying art with Irene Weir in 1913 at the Arts High School of the Ethical Culture School. He was the first African American to receive the Wolfe scholarship for his studies. In 1915, Smith became the first African American student admitted to the National Academy of Art and Design where he studied painting with Douglas Volk, mural painting with Kenyon Cox, and printmaking with William Auerbach-Levy. Smith was probably the first African American to use the etching press. While attending school, Smith was the recipient of numerous awards and had his first illustration published in The Crisis. Upon his return to the academy, after serving in WWI, he received the John Armstrong Chaloner Paris Foundation first prize for painting from life as well as a first prize for etching. In 1920, Smith moved to Europe, where he remained for the rest of his life, supporting his artistic endeavors by working as a cabaret musician at night. His work was continually shown in both the United States and Europe, and many of his illustrations appeared in The Crisis and Opportunity. Smith worked closely with Arthur Schomburg of the New York Public Library,
executing a series of etchings of great Black leaders which were shown at the library, as well as finding rare books on Black culture he found in Europe for Schomburg to include in his collection. His drawing, Plantation Melodies earned a gold medal at the Tanner Art League in Washington D.C. in 1922. Between 1928 and 1933, the Harmon Foundation in New York showed two dozen of his works and awarded him a bronze medal in 1929. Smith continued to exhibit every year of the American Artists Professional League in Paris between 1935 and 1938. In 1939, his work was included in the Contemporary Negro Art Exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. His work is found in the collections of the Harmon Foundation, the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Collection, and the National Archives. Self Portrait, from the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, San Francisco, CA
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Untitled, Men Clearing a Stone, c. 1925 watercolor on paper 9 x 12 inches signed
Provenance: Private collection, Paris (originally purchased at the artist's estate sale) $2,000-3,000
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ALBERT ALEXANDER SMITH (1896-1940)
Puente de San Martín Bridge, Spain, 1926 oil on canvas 25 x 39 1/2 inches signed, dated, and inscribed, "Toledo" (Spain)
Provenance: This work was in a private collection with another painting (Road to La Carolina) by Smith bearing a label of Kiluna Farm, Long Island, NY. Smith's father worked at Kiluna Farm for many years as a chauffeur for Ralph Pulitzer, son of publisher, Joseph Pulitzer. $8,000-10,000 Thank you to M. Elizabeth (Betsy) Boone, PhD, Professor, History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture, Department of Art and Design, University of Alberta for her help in identifying the location of the bridge!
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ALBERT ALEXANDER SMITH (1896-1940)
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ALBERT ALEXANDER SMITH (1896-1940)
Plantation Melodies, 1923
etching 8 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches (image) 13 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches (sheet) signed and titled in margin $2,000-3,000 Provenance: private collection, Bloomington, Indiana Illustrated: The Crisis, 1920; New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934, Theresa Leininger-Miller. This is a very rare print. To our knowledge, it has never been offered before at auction. Catalog Note: Look for an important essay written by Albert Alexander Smith scholar, Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller, which we will post to our website in the next couple of weeks. Dr. Leininger-Miller discusses a recently discovered painting by Smith, Road to La Carolina, but also the group of works being offered in this auction.
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ALBERT ALEXANDER SMITH (1896-1940)
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HOWARD SMITH (1928-2021) Smith was born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1928, and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He exhibited at the Amos Anderson Museum, Helsinki, Finland and is represented in the collection of the Turku Museum (also Finland). His work is also in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY.
What was going for me here only continued and flowered in Finland. I did not suddenly discover the Finnish landscape to the exclusion of all else and get myself drowned in all of those virtues in the summer. In fact, I actively resisted the threat of being totally engulfed by the Finnish culture. (Lewis)
Smith specialized in printmaking (serigraphy) and fabric design. Examples of his work may be seen in Black Artists on Art v. 2, Lewis/Waddy, and African American Art and Artists, Lewis, pp.264265.
I should think that the Black artist as any other artist and especially since his and his people’s position is such as it is should make more effort towards making available to the Black public good examples of his work. (Lewis/Waddy)
He moved to Finland in 1962, and spoke about the move:
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Acrobats, 1982
screen print on canvas (laid down, original) 37 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches (image) signed, titled, dated, with AP in pencil $2,000-3,000
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• 339
FREDDIE STYLES (b. 1944) Styles is an Atlanta-based abstract painter, who credits his rural upbringing as influential on his work. He believes a rural lifestyle creates a deep connection—a sensitivity-- between the land and the people owing their existence to it. He graduated from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, and served as artist-in-residence at several institutions, including Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College. He has exhibited at the High Museum, Atlanta; Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah; City Gallery East, Atlanta; African American Abstraction, American Embassies in Sierra Leone, Trinidad & Tobago and South Africa; Tradition Redefined, The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA, 2011; and the Tubman Museum, Macon, GA. In 1997, he was commissioned to create an ad for Absolut Vodka, and in 2001, he was awarded a King Baudouin Foundation Cultural Exchange Program grant to work and study in Belgium.
Styles’ work is included in the following collections: High Museum; Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Atlanta; MOCA/GA, Atlanta; Spelman College Museum of Art; Clark Atlanta University Collection; Saint Louis Art Museum; Paul R. Jones Collection, University of Delaware; University of Alabama; and Absolut Vodka, Sweden.
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Silver Series, Yellow, 2020 acrylic on canvas 48 x 60 inches signed, titled, dated $15,000-20,000
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MILDRED THOMPSON (1936-2003) Abstract sculptor, painter, and printmaker, Mildred Thompson was born in Jacksonville Florida. She attended Howard University where she studied under James Porter - the mentorship of whom had a profound effect on her and her work. Thompson went on to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and earned a Max Beckmann Scholarship for study at the Brooklyn Museum School. In 1962, she was also selected for the prestigious MacDowell Colony residency in New Hampshire. Thompson experienced early success and acclaim for her work in the United States, but due to racial and gender inequalities, decided to relocate to Germany where she taught and exhibited widely throughout Europe. She returned in 1974 when she began a series of artist residencies for the City of Tampa, Howard University, and Spelman College. In addition to her work as an artist and educator,
Thompson also served as an associate editor of the publication Art Papers. Recently, her work was featured in the 2017 exhibition, Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today which originated at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO and traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida. In 2019, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art held Mildred Thompson: The Atlanta Years, 1986-2003.
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At MacDowell, Peterborough, N.H., 1962 ink drawing on paper 29 x 39 inches signed, dated, titled $3,000-5,000
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KARA WALKER (b.1969 ) Walker was born in California, but raised in Atlanta from the age of 13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Art (MFA, 1994). Her work primarily addresses race, gender, and sexuality in graphic terms. She is well-known for her silhouette cut-outs, paintings, prints, installations, in black and white contrast. In 2007, the Walker Art Center presented the first full-scale museum survey of her work, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love. Her work is included in numerous museum permanent collections. Works from this series may also be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (Camptown, 1997) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (Drumstick).
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Sketch From a Fabulous Tale, from Skowhegan portfolio no. 1, 2011
lithograph on wove paper 14 x 18 inches (sheet), full margins signed, dated, and numbered 12/30 in pencil lower margin published by Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine Provenance: Private collection, NY $3,000-5,000
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WILLIAM “BILL” WALKER (1927-2011) In August of 1967, on the southeast corner of 43rd and Langley Streets, Chicago, Illinois, a group of African American artists came together to paint the landmark mural that sparked a people’s art movement. William “Bill” Walker was instrumental in the creation of the Wall of Respect. The purpose of the project was to “honor our Black heroes and to beautify our community.” It soon became, in the words of fellow artist Jeff Donaldson, An instantaneous shrine to Black creativity, a rallying point for revolutionary rhetoric and calls to action, and a national symbol of the heroic Black struggle for liberation in America. Cities across American followed suit with murals of their own. Bill Walker continued to paint murals in the city of Chicago, as he had painted them before 1967, solidifying his role as father of the community mural movement capturing the “human side of street life in the city.” Bill Walker was born in 1927 in Birmingham, Alabama. An only child, he was initially raised by his grandmother in a desperately poor ghetto of “bleak little shacks” with outhouses known as Alley B. In 1938, he was sent north to Chicago to join his mother who worked as a seamstress and hairdresser. They lived in a variety of places in the Washington Park area and he eventually attended Englewood High School. Walker was drafted in WWII and re-enlisted to receive college tuition under the GI Bill. He was a mail clerk, then an MP with the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the all black command
under which the Tuskegee Airmen fought. In 1947, he painted his first murals while in the military. While stationed in Columbus, Ohio he became friends with Samella Lewis. He often stayed with her family and assisted her on a few commissions. In 1949 he enrolled in the Columbus Gallery School of Arts. He began studying commercial art and later switched to a concentration in fine art. Walker won the school’s 47th Annual Group Exhibition “Best of Show” award in 1952. He was the first African-American to do so. Walker credits Joseph Canzani with encouraging his interest in mural painting. At school he studied the early Renaissance fresco painters. It wasn’t until after his graduation that he learned about the Mexican muralists - Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco. He was particularly impressed with the way they incorporated structural elements in to their compositions. Walker also cited Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, and William McBride as important influences.
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After graduation, Walker headed to Nashville and Memphis where he painted murals for a Baptist church, a local Elks club, and the Flamingo Club, a nightclub near Beale Street. While researching and preparing to complete another mural of a plantation scene, he had an important epiphany. He realized he needed to create art that spoke for those who had been marginalized. Walker returned to Chicago and worked as a decorative painter for a variety of north-side interior designer firms. By the mid 1960s, Walker was formulating an idea for a mural in the area near 43rd and Langley which never came to fruition. However in May of 1967, the Organization of Black American Culture was formed and the opportunity again arose. OBAC was cofounded by artist Jeff Donaldson, sociologist Gerald McWorter, and Hoyt Fuller, editor of Negro Digest, and was dedicated to visual art, music, writing, dance, and theater. Walker floated the idea of a mural at the location. The group couldn’t just simply paint a mural and leave it at that. Walker knew the neighborhood well and secured permission from business owners, community leaders, and street gangs. The residents were a big part of the process as well. Jeff Donaldson and Eliot Hunter, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Hogu-Jones, Caroline Lawrence, Norman Parish, Edward Christmas, Myrna Weaver and many others contributed sections to the wall. Walker was responsible for the section on religious leaders. Walker had originally painted the portraits of Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad, Nat Turner, and Wyatt Walker, a New York minister and civil rights activist, but when threatened with a lawsuit by Muhammad, who did not want to be pictured on the same wall as
Malcolm X, he erased the section and replaced it with a composition of Nat Turner. The members of the OBAC eventually drifted apart- some, Donaldson, Jarrell, Jones, and Lawrence formed AfriCobra- and Walker, who remained in the neighborhood, came to be the “guardian of the wall.” As a result of the impact the Wall of Respect had in Chicago, similar walls were created in cities across the country. Walker worked on the Wall of Dignity in Detroit and the Wall of Truth, which was located across the street from the Wall of Respect. He co-founded the Chicago Mural Group (now known as the Chicago Public Art Group) with John Pitman Weber and Eugene Eda and completed more than 30 murals over the next four decades in working-class Chicago neighborhoods. In 1975, he formed his own mural group known as International Walls, Inc. Walker turned increasingly to studio art in the late 70’s. Chicago State University held the exhibition, Images of Conscience: The Art of Bill Walker in 1984. The exhibition consisted of 44 paintings and drawings in three series: For Blacks Only; Red, White, and Blue, I Love You; and Reaganomics. The show was not without controversy as the images presented were not pretty, but dark representations of urban black neighborhoods. The exhibition traveled to the Vaughn Cultural Center, St. Louis and the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, Pennsylvania State University. Most recently, Walker’s work was presented in the exhibition Bill Walker: Urban Griot, held at the Hyde Park Art Center, 2017-18.
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WILLIAM “BILL” WALKER (1927-2011)
Three Deacons, c. 1955 oil on canvas 27 3/4 x 18 inches signed $2,500-3,500 Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, Thom Pegg, Tyler Fine Art, St Louis, MO, p. 133
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WILLIAM “BILL” WALKER (1927-2011)
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LARRY WALKER (b. 1935) A major aspect of my creative pursuits seems to be my concern for the relationship of shapes to their existing environment. Often these shapes appear as human images, sometimes as enigmatic forces that suggest natural phenomena. Larry Walker was born in Franklin, Georgia, but at the age of five, his family moved to New York City. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in 1953, and went on to earn his M.A. at Wayne State University. He taught in the Detroit Public School System before becoming a professor and Chairperson at the College of the Pacific (Art Dept, Stockton, CA)
Photo: Black Artists on Art, v. 1, Lewis/Waddy, 1969, p. 74
REF: Black Art, an International Quarterly, Summer 1977, Vol. 1, Number 4, p. 4. Solo Exhibitions: Larry Walker: Four Decades, City Gallery East, Bureau of Cultural Affairs, City of Atlanta and Georgia State University School of Art and Design (ATL), 2001; Larry Walker: Saguaro Spirits , Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA (1999). His work was included in Black Romantic at the Studio Museum in Harlem, April 25-June 23, 2002. See also: Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, 2009, p. 92.
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Figurative Emergence, c. 1980-
90 acrylic on Arches paper 17 x 11inches (sheet) 15 x 9 inches (image showing) signed; signed, titled verso in pen by the artist; also artist label verso $2,000-3,000
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RONALD WALTON (20th-21st century) Ronald Walton was born in New York City and works in Brooklyn. His early collages were focused on social realism characteristic of the Civil Rights Era, but by the later 1970s, his style became more surrealistic and he created his “Rollcubistic” method, which uses overlapping spheres to create human forms. His images combine colors that create an illuminating effect, and he incorporates several media into the same work (ink, pastel, and oil). In 2016, the Virginia Museum of Art acquired a large work titled Nightmares by Walton. He is deeply connected to music—when he lived in New York, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk lived on his street—and much of his work addresses some form of music.
Photo: The artist in his Petersburg gallery, Ash Daniel.
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Mother and Child, c. 1980
Hearts and Diamonds, 1990
$1,000-2,000
$1,000-2,000
mixed media on paper 16 1/2 x 13 1/4 inches signed
pastel on paper 24 x 18 1/2 inches signed
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CHERYL WARRICK (b. 1956) Warrick is a Boston-based abstract painter. She was born in St Albans, NY and studied at the Massachusetts College of Art (BFA). She has exhibited extensively in Boston area galleries and at the Museum of Fine Art Boston. Her work is included in many public and corporate collections including: the Boston Public Library; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Rhode Island School of Design; Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, Harpo Productions; Museum of Art, Providence; and Lucent Technologies, NY.
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Still, 1988
acrylic on canvas 58 x 50 inches $4,000-6,000
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CHERYL WARRICK (b. 1956)
Untitled
acrylic on paper 35 x 27 inches Inscribed “Cheryl Warrick” verso
$3,000-5,000
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CHERYL WARRICK (b. 1956)
Untitled
acrylic on paper 22 x 30 inches (image) 26 x 33 3/4 inches (framed) Inscribed “Cheryl Warrick” verso
$3,000-5,000
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CARRIE MAE WEEMS (b. 1953) When and Where I Enter the British Museum, 2007
Inkjet digital print on Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper 30 x 20 inches BCI 19/20, published by the Brodsky Center at PAFA, Philadelphia from The Rivington Place portfolio signed by the artist in pencil $4,000-6,000
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979) Born in 1918 in Chicago, Charles White was initially an introverted child, preferring to retreat into a world of reading and drawing. As he grew older, he became more outspoken, influenced by Alain Locke’s The New Negro. As a student at Englewood High School, alongside other future notables such as Margaret Burroughs, Eldzier Cortor, and Charles Sebree, he often clashed with his teachers over their whitewashing of historical subjects. He joined George Neal’s Art Crafts Guild and gathered at the studio of Morris Topchevsky, where he was able to further explore his views of art, politics, and the role of the African American in society. White graduated high school in 1937 and went on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was subsequently hired by the Illinois Art Project in the easel division, but transferred to the mural division, where he worked with Edward Millman and Mitchell Siporin. His first major mural, Five Great American Negroes, was completed in 1940. His work was also exhibited at the American Negro Exposition, winning several awards. White married Elizabeth Catlett in 1941 after meeting her at the South Side Community Art Center, and the pair moved to New Orleans where they both taught at Dillard University. Two consecutive Rosenwald scholarships
allowed him to study lithography at the Art Student’s League of New York with Harry Sternberg, as well as travel the Southern United States. He used this opportunity to observe and paint black farmers and laborers for his mural, The Contribution of the Negro to the Democracy of America. (continued) Catlett and White relocated to Mexico where they both became involved with the Taller Grafica de Popular. After their divorce, White returned to New York City. His work retained a figurative style which stood in stark contrast to the burgeoning abstract movement occurring at the time. He used drawings, linocuts, and woodcuts to celebrate the historical figures who resisted slavery, as well as ordinary African Americans struggling amid great social injustice in a post-slavery America. Despite their small size, these works conveyed the power of a mural.
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In New York in the 1940s and early 1950s, White showed his work at the progressive ACA Gallery and was a prominent member of African American and leftist artist communities. White moved to Southern California in 1956, and his career flourished as he embraced drawing and printmaking more fully, pushing at the boundaries of his media while continuing to engage with civil rights and equality. Despite his rejection of the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism and ongoing use of an expressive figuration, he found critical acclaim in the United States and abroad.
Chicago in 2018. This exhibition traveled to the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019.
White was the second African American to be inducted into the National Academy of Art and Design in 1975. Charles White: A Retrospective was held at the Art Institute of
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Young Woman, 1963-1964
lithograph 13 1/4 x 16 3/4 inches pencil signed, titled, dated and numbered, 1-Ed. 20 $5,000-7,000 Illustrated: Charles White, The Gordon Gift to the University of Texas, Roberts, p. 20-21 John P. Murphy writes , “White exhibited Young Woman in 1964 at the major exhibition The Art of Charles White: Lithographs , Linocuts, and Drawings, which traveled in Los Angeles from Occidental College to the School of Fine Arts of the University of Judaism. It also appeared in 1965 in his final exhibition at New York’s American Contemporary Art (ACA) Gallery, which had mounted seven oneperson shows of White’s work since 1947.”
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Madonna, 1979
etching in brown on cream wove paper 11 3/4 x 19 1/4 inches (image) 22 1/4 x 29 3/4 inches (sheet) Printed by Hand Graphics Ltd, New Mexico Estate stamp signature "Charles White" numbered in pencil 32/80 $3,000-4,000
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Charles White contributed to Daily Worker, The New Masses and Masses & Mainstream, all communist publications in the 1940s and 50s. This biting satirical image of John E. Rankin, a Democratic politician from Mississippi who served sixteen terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1921-1953) accompanied an essay by Ralph Bowman, Roots of America’s Revolution in 1945.
condemned Paul Robeson for inciting violence when a racist mob attacked people leaving one of his concerts.
Rankin supported many programs that negatively affected African Americans. He proposed a bill to prohibit interracial marriage, supported segregation and denied federal benefits of various programs to African Americans. A year before White executed this drawing, Rankin tried to lower benefits to victims of the Port of Chicago disaster after learning that most of the dead were black sailors. He consistently discriminated against black veterans in legislation intended to build social capital among residents of the South. Black veterans were denied loans, training and employment assistance under his watch and Historically Black Colleges and Universities were severely underfunded, thereby limiting enrollment.
Another well-known image White executed for The New Masses was Can a Negro Study Law in Texas (1946), pictured in Charles White The Gordon Gift to The University of Texas, Roberts, Blanton Museum of Art, p.6, 8. This image addresses the Sweatt v. Painter court case, in which Heman Sweatt (an African American) was initially denied enrollment to the School of Law at the University of Texas. While losing in the lower courts, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually granted Sweatt a victory. This case was influential to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case held four years later.
Rankin explicitly expressed racist views and used racial slurs on the floor of the House. He sought to prevent the desegregation of Veterans Administration hospitals, arguing for treating black veterans in rural, isolated, all-black hospitals. He opposed bills that made lynching a federal crime, arguing they promoted rape and “racial equality would destroy the white man’s civilization throughout the world.” He refused to sit next to freshman congressman Adam Clayton Powell and
Rankin did not limit his racism to African Americans, but also included Jewish people and Asians. He was defeated by Thomas G. Abernethy (who was only slightly better) for re-election in 1952 and (thankfully) died in 1960.
Both drawings are executed in what some call a “Soviet social realist” style. In an essay in Roberts’ book, Austin-based lawyer and art collector, Rudolph H. Green writes, "Can a Negro Study Law in Texas represents an early example of the way White put his beliefs into action and used art as a tool to attack the status quo as reflected in Jim Crow laws. White created his drawing in support of Sweatt but also as a call to action in support of efforts to promote equality and social justice in America.” That statement would be equally relevant to the drawing, Rep. Rankin (Alias Swine), 1945.
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Rep. Rankin (Alias: Swine) Portrait of Representative John Rankin (Mississippi), 1945 ink drawing on paperboard 16 x 12 1/2 inches signed and dated, inscribed.
Artist name and address verso, "CHARLES WHITE, 34 BEDFORD ST." in the hand of the artist.
Illustrated: New Masses, July 10, 1945 (Vol. 56, No. 2), accompanying Ralph Bowman's essay, Roots of America's Revolution, p.7. Authenticity confirmed by Frances White, as well as The Charles White Archives. $25,000-35,000
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Profile of a Woman, Facing Right, 1979 (printed 1984) etching in brown ink 12 x 13 inches estate stamped signature, numbered in pencil 48/80
An example of this image is in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin. It is illustrated in Charles White, The Gordon Gift to the University of Texas, 2019, p. 49. $2,000-3,000
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Untitled, Head of a Woman III, 1979 (printed in 1984) etching in brown ink 11 7/8 x 12 7/8 inches estate stamped signature, numbered in pencil 48/80
An example of this image is in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin. It is illustrated in Charles White, The Gordon Gift to the University of Texas, 2019, p. 49. $2,000-3,000
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Standing Man, 1934
watercolor on cream wove paper 10 x 8 inches signed Retains Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles label verso. $4,000-6,000
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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)
Portrait of a Man in a Green Jacket, 1934 watercolor on cream wove paper 7 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches
Retains Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles label verso. $4,000-6,000
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JOHN D. WOLFE (contemporary) Wolfe was born on the lower East Side Manhattan. He served in the 101st Airborne in the Vietnam War, and when he returned from duty, he took classes at the Art Students League (NY). After graduation, he moved upstate to the town of New Paltz and opened a studio. He works primarily as an illustrator, and has been published in many books and magazines. The book, A Different War: Vietnam by Lucy Lippard, featured his work alongside that of artists such as Cliff Joseph.
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After Hours, 1993
oil on canvas 36 x 30 inches signed and dated; signed, dated, titled verso Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $3,000-4,000
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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980) Hale Woodruff began his career studying at the John Herron Institute in Indianapolis. He had enjoyed some degree of success and exhibited frequently in Indianapolis and in Chicago by the time he won a Harmon Foundation prize in 1926. This award financed a trip to Paris. Woodruff was deeply influenced by the European modernists, especially Cézanne. He spent a great deal of time with the poet Countee Cullen and painter Palmer Hayden while in Paris. Cullen was there on a Guggenheim Fellowship and Hayden, a Harmon Foundation gold medal prize he won the year previously. Woodruff was encouraged to start a collection of African art by Alain Locke, who accompanied him to the Paris flea markets. In 1931, Woodruff returned to the United States and began teaching art at Atlanta University. It was Woodruff who was responsible for that department’s frequent designation as the École des Beaux Arts of the black South in later years. As he excelled as chairman of the art department at Atlanta University, his reputation also grew as one of the most talented African-American artists of the Depression era. Woodruff moved to New York in 1946, where he taught in the art department at New York University from 1947 until his retirement in 1968. During the mid-1960s Woodruff and fellow artist Romare Bearden were instrumental in starting Spiral, a collaboration of African-American artists working in New York. Woodruff’s New York works were greatly
influenced by abstract expressionism and the painters of the New York School who were active during the late 1940s and 1950s. Among his associates were Adolf Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock. Following a long and distinguished career that took him from Paris to New York via the Deep South, Woodruff died in New York in 1980. The artist, c. 1942, Courtesy Mary Parks Washington personal papers
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Untitled, abstracted figure, 1970 charcoal on paper 22 1/2 x 16 inches signed
Provenance: Chet Helms, Atelier Dore, San Francisco, CA $7,000-9,000
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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980)
Untitled, 1978
watercolor on paper 6 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches signed and dated Private collection, Richmond, Virginia $4,000-6,000
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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980)
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CHARLES YOUNG (1931-2005) “Functionalism” as I define it for my works, is that creative work which has meaning, substance, life quality and truth for the creator as well as the beholder, whether Black or white. My definition I believe, is strengthened mainly by my interest and study of African art. I think it is necessary that the BLACK ARTIST relate experiences which he himself has experienced in order to create symbols that are a part of his existence. Those experiences which are ugly and grotesque, as well as those which are warm and beautiful, must be created by the artist in visual terms. Charles Young was born in 1930 in New York City and attended Hampton University, VA where he received a B.A. in art education and social science. He went on to attend New York University where he trained with Hale Woodruff. From there, he studied painting and printmaking at Catholic University, Washington DC. Young was an educator in New Jersey public schools, and taught art at several institutions, including Federal City College, Washington D.C. where he was chairman of the art department. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at North Carolina State University, Fayetteville, NC, 1960, 1962; A & I State University, Nashville, TN, 1964; Agra Gallery, Washington DC, 1972; and Smith-Mason Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1969. He often participated in exhibitions with Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam, and Kenneth Young in the Washington DC area and was featured additionally in Black Artists/South, Huntsville Museum of Art, AL, 1979; and shows at Emory University, GA; and the Richmond Museum of Art, VA.
Photo: Black Artists on Art, v. 2, Lewis/Waddy, p.8
Charles Young’s work has been categorized by critics as expressionistic but it is also poetic, reflecting the rhythm that one sees in nature. There are times when he seems to revive the power and concrete meaning found in the work of de Steel and Hoffman. But his sensitivity to subtle color and the power of expression in simple shapes… remove him from the category of an ardent follower of either. It is here that he makes personal statements about the world he observes. Charles Young like every artist of purpose reveals a definition of form that adds to our visual enjoyment and understanding of the world in which we live. For such an enlightening visual experience we are all much richer. ---David Driskell, Chairman, Art Department Fisk University The work of Charles Young will be included in the forthcoming exhibit, Afro-American Images 1971, The Vision of Percy Ricks, October 2021-January 2022 at the Delaware Art Museum.
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Untitled, (Figures With a Cat), c. 1970 oil on canvas 57-1/2 x 46 inches signed $15,000-25,000
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CHARLES YOUNG (1931-2005)
Untitled, c. 1970
color woodblock print 12-1/2 x 16 inches (image) 16 x 24 inches (sheet) signed and numbered 4/6 $1,000-2,000
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CHARLES YOUNG (1931-2005)
Black Maiden’s Dream, c. 1970 color woodblock print 16 x 12-1/2 inches (image) 20 x 17 inches (sheet) signed, titled, numbered 6/15 $1,000-2,000
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KENNETH V. YOUNG (1933-2017) Kenneth Young was born in Louisville, KY in 1933. He studied physics initially at the University of Louisville, KY but graduated with a degree in fine arts in 1962. While in Louisville, he joined Gallery Enterprise, a black artist’s group that counted Bob Thompson and Sam Gilliam among its members. Young moved to Washington DC in 1964 and took a job at the Smithsonian Institution, where he served as an exhibition designer. He also worked for the United States Information Agency as a design specialist, making frequent trips to Egypt and other African nations to consult with curators on their exhibition design. While pursuing his career, Young continued to paint and became acquainted with the Washington Color School artists. He received his first one man show at Franz Bader Gallery in 1968. Other important solo exhibitions were held at Fisk University in 1973 and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC, in 1974. In the catalog essay for the exhibition, The Language of Abstraction, Ed Clark, Richard W. Franklin, and Kenneth Young (2018), Dr. Jennifer Cohen writes, During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Young pushed the formal boundaries of color painting while invoking a wide range of sources and allusions. His works referred to beauty found in nature, the history of art, and the politics of the civil rights era. He used diluted acrylic pigments on raw canvas to explore, as he put it, beginnings and endings, probing the boundaries between vibrant colors with complex bleeds and blurs. Working on the floor or a table, Young would introduce pigments to a selectively dampened canvas
with a brush. Then, with a sponge and spray bottle at hand, he would control the bleeds by alternately dampening and drying areas of the composition. Young’s painting, Red Dance (1970) is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. The painting first gained attention when it was featured in Black Art in America, a 1970 article written by Barbara Rose for the publication, Art in America. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions including: Washington: 20 Years, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, 1970; Black American Artists/ 71, Illinois Arts Council, 1971; Art in Washington and Its AfroAmerican Presence 1940-1970, Washington Project for the Arts, 1985; African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, 2012; and most recently, Kenneth Victor Young: Continuum, held at American University museum in 2019.
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Ancona, 2001
acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 18 inches signed and dated $20,000-30,000
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BARBARA JOHNSON ZUBER (1926-2019) My paintings are two-dimensional, instead of three, because I feel it brings the viewer into closer relationship with the sense of space and motion. It also reduces the human form into symbolic imagery by abstracting the essence from the figure. This all goes back to a great influence from Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson, and Giotto. Barbara Johnson Zuber, Forever Free: Art by African American Women 1862-1980, 1980, p. 150 Barbara Johnson Zuber was born in Philadelphia, PA and raised in New York City where she attended the Little Red School House and graduated from Walden School. She received a BFA from Yale University, the first African American woman to do so, and studied additionally at NYU and the Art Student’s League of NY.
Photo: Forever Free: Art by African American Women 1862-1980, Fonvielle-Bontemps, 1980, p. 150.
In addition to painting, Barbara was also a writer and illustrator of children’s books having published Brown is a Beautiful Color in 1969, and a teacher. Her work has been featured in exhibitions including: Forever Free: Art by AfricanAmerican Women 1862-1980, Illinois State University, 1981 (traveling); 15 AfroAmerican Women, H.C. Taylor Gallery, North Carolina A&T State University, 1970; A New Vitality in Art: The Black Woman, John and Nashe Warbe Gallery, Mount Holyoke College, 1972; and SANKOFA: Celebrating 25 Years of Black Dimensions in Art, Inc, Albany International Airport Gallery, 2000.
Photo: Historic Images - 1985 Press Photo Barbara Zuber Leads Hamilton Hill Art Center Class, Albany, NY
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Cotton Needs Picking, Lawd, Lawd, c. 1950
oil on vellum mounted on stretched canvas 11 1/4 x 20 1/4 inches signed, Barbara Johnson (in oil) artist's notes written in pencil in margins outside of main image $15,000-20,000 This early work was executed by the artist shortly after her graduation from Yale University and prior to her marriage to Paul B. Zuber, civil rights attorney and professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Johnson's aunt (Rose) and uncle lived in Jackson, Mississippi, where her uncle served as Vice Provost at Tougaloo College. The artist's son, Paul Zuber, believes she would have likely seen scenes such as this when visiting them. BAA is very grateful for his assistance in cataloging this work.
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