BLACK ART AUCTION, Fall Auction Preview, December 4, 2021

BLACK ART AUCTION Saturday, December 4, 2021 12PM EST

BLACK ART AUCTION Saturday, December 4, 2021 12PM EST

JIM ALEXANDER (b. 1935) Jim Alexander and Gordon Parks, Clark College, 1987 gelatin silver print 9-1/2 x 6-1/4 inches signed by both Alexander and Parks and inscribed Clark College 1987 Jim Alexander was born in Waldwick, New Jersey, one of thirteen children. When he turned 18, he decided to enlist in the US Navy. This decision would coincidentally influence the course of his life and career. In a dice game while he was at boot camp in Bainbridge, Maryland, he won a camera, and after some practice, began selling photos to other sailors for fifty cents each. While on a naval base in Charleston, he learned more about photography from the base photographer, and when he left the Navy he enrolled in the New York Institute of Photography. He earned a degree in commercial photography there (1968), and a certificate in Business Management at Rutgers University.

Alexander began a lifelong project of documenting human rights and the Black experience after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. He befriended Gordon Parks and Parks became a sort of mentor to Alexander. After hearing Alexander’s intention to devote his career to this cause, Parks replied, “that sounds good James, but your ass is going to starve, nobody is going to pay you to just run around shooting anything that interests you.”

Alexander’s solution was to accept teaching jobs that would earn him a living and allow him to indulge his interest in more artistic (and less profitable) endeavors.

In 1970, he moved to New Haven, CT, and taught at Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture’s Black Environmental Studies Team and The Black Workshop. In 1976, he moved to Atlanta, GA, to take a position as audiovisual communications director for the Atlanta Office of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a non-profit established to save, protect, and expand the landholdings of African American family farmers in the South.

Another interest of Alexander’s was music—from jazz to rock. He executed an extensive photoessay of legendary jazz great, Duke Ellington (highlighted in the publication, Duke and Other Legends). Two similar images may be seen in A Century of African American Art, The Paul R. Jones Collection, Amalia Amaki, editor, 2004, University of Delaware, pp. 184185.

REF: The Jim Alexander Collection , www.jimalexandercollection.com/biography

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CHARLES ALSTON (1907-1977) Painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist, and educator Charles Alston was born in 1907. After his father’s death, his mother remarried Henry Pierce Bearden (Romare Bearden’s uncle) and the family moved from North Carolina to Harlem. Alston painted and sculpted at an early age and received formal instruction at Columbia University. While attending college, he taught art at the Utopia House and served as a mentor to a young Jacob Lawrence. In 1934, he co-founded the Harlem Arts Workshop, which eventually came to be known as “306.”

In 1936, Alston accompanied Giles Hubert, a Farm Security Administration inspector, on a tour of the South, where he sketched and photographed rural life. In this capacity, he was able to observe and record places and people he might not have had the opportunity to do so by himself. They traveled through Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, the Carolinas, and Georgia. When he returned to his studio, Alston had a wealth of material from which to draw.

His Family series eventually grew from these experiences.

Alston also become close friends with Hale Woodruff. They had much in common, especially with regards to mural making - Alston had completed his own murals for the WPA at the Harlem Hospital, and Woodruff was completing the Amistad murals at Talledega College. In 1948, the two would collaborate on the murals for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles.

Together they spent months touring California, studying its scenery, people, history, and problems before creating two murals.

A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, 1993: 264.

Alston’s style grew more abstract by the 1950’s, but he never completely abandoned figurative studies. His figures characteristically maintain a sculpture like quality influenced by African sculpture. His subjects were derived mainly from the experiences of his life and time.

Alston states, “As an artist . . . I am intensely interested in probing, exploring the problems of color, space and form, which challenge all contemporary painters. However, as a black American . . . I cannot but be sensitive and responsive in my painting to the injustice, the indignity, and the hypocrisy suffered by black citizens.”

In 1956, Alston became the first African American instructor at the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1963, he co-founded (with Romare Bearden) the group Spiral. In 1973, he was made full professor at the City College of New York.

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Deserted Barn, 1937-1939 lithograph on wove paper 13 x 18 inches signed and titled

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FREDERICK C. ALSTON (1895-1987) Light of the World, 1929 watercolor on paper 25 x 17 inches signed and dated; titled on label verso: Citizens Art Committee Awards in Fine Arts and Exhibition of Fine Arts.

This is a very rare, early work by Alston, reminiscent of another Harlem Renaissance painter, Aaron Douglas. It was likely used as an illustration. An example of the artist’s work is currently included in the exhibition, “Art Along the Rivers” at the St Louis Art Museum.

Born in 1895 in Wilmington, North Carolina, Frederick C. Alston enjoyed considerable success in the early 20th century - exhibiting with the Harmon Foundation 1929-31 and 1933. He had attended Shaw University, NC and graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts in Philadelphia. He was also noted to have studied privately with Tanasko Milovich in St. Louis, MO. Alston spent over 38 years teaching in the St. Louis public school system and also taught at the People’s Art Center. Funded by the WPA, the People’s Art Center, located at 3657 Grandel Square and 724 N. Union Blvd., was the first integrated arts center in St. Louis.

In 1975 he was honored by the National Conference of Artists for his dedication to art education.

REF: Black Artists/South, Huntsville Museum of Art, AL, 1979

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EMMA AMOS (1938-2020) The Beach, 1987 pastel and watercolor on paper 29 x 28 inches signed, titled, and dated Artist, educator and activist Emma Amos was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1938. Amos excelled at art an early age - showing her work in the Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Prints by Negro Artists at Atlanta University at the age of 15. She went on to study art at Antioch College in Ohio, where she also learned weaving. After pursuing further study in London, UK, she settled in New York City. From 1961-1972, Amos worked for textile designer Dorothy Liebes as a designer/weaver. She studied printmaking with Robert Blackburn and Letterio Calpai.

When she graduated from NYU with a master's in art education, she began a teaching career at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, NJ and then the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, where she remained until her retirement in 2008.

Throughout her career, Amos was influenced by modern Western European art, Abstract Expressionism, the Civil Rights movement, and feminism. She found that the effort for Black representation in the art world often forgot women - even as a member of Spiral - she was the only female member. She went on to join the radical feminist artist group, Heresies Collective, whose aim was to examine art from a feminist and political perspective. In addition to a variety of actions and cultural output, the collective was responsible for the overseeing the publication of the journal Heresies: A feminist publication on art and politics.

She was also a member of the Guerrilla Girls whose aim was to subvert sexism and racism in the art world.

Amos has exhibited widely throughout her career including the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power which showed from 2017-2020 and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985 which originated at the Brooklyn Museum.

The retrospective, Emma Amos: Color Odyssey was on view this year at the MunsonWilliams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY until September 12; the exhibition will travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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WILLIAM ANDERSON, JR (b. 1932) Dream, 1975 Silver gelatin print 14-1/2 x 10 inches (image) 17-3/4 x 13 inches (sheet) signed verso 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.

“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 and 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), The J. Paul Getty Museum (LA), Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), and the High Museum (ATL).

He served as a professor at Morehouse University for many years and was chairman of the art department.

William Anderson, Jr.: An Underappreciated Artist

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WILLIAM ANDERSON, JR (b. 1932)

One Minute to Rest, 1968 Silver gelatin print 9-3/4 x 7-1/4 inches signed verso, #2

WILLIAM ANDERSON, JR (b. 1932)

BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006) Untitled (Figure With Head in Hands), n.d. acrylic on board 10 x 8 inches signed 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. His work is currently on view in the exhibitions War Within War Without: MOMA’s Permanent Collection, NY; Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC; and 50 x 50: Stories of Visionary Artists from the Collection, San Jose Museum of Art, CA.

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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006)

Tribute to Kennedy, 1963 oil, mixed media, and collage 22-1/2 x 15 inches signed and dated Two labels verso: Raydon Gallery, NY Weatherspoon Annual Exhibition, Art on Paper, 1977 Weatherspoon Art Gallery, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006)

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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006)

Haiti I, 1992 color intaglio monoprint with extensive collage on wove paper 41 1/2 x 29 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated and titled in pencil, blind stamp printed and published by Smith Anderson Editions, Palo Alto, CA

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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006)

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BELKIS AYON (1967-1999) Untitled (Sin titulo), 1999 lithograph (offset) 20 x 27 7/8 inches signed, dated and numbered 4/40 Printed at the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia.

Ayon was a Cuban printmaker who specialized in the labor-intensive art of collagraphy.

The layman's definition of this process is the artist creates a collage of materials on a rigid substrate, inks it, and transfers the image to a sheet of paper by pressing. However, the range and variety of materials as well as the inking strategies are infinite. The process is equally about subtracting as it is about adding: the artist may also carve or etch into the surface in areas.

Ayon was born in Havana and studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana (ISA), and after graduation, joined the faculty there. The primary theme in her work centers around the Afro-Cuban secret society of Abakuá, a male-only brotherhood with a complex structure of rituals and beliefs. This culture began in Nigeria and was brought across the Atlantic to Haiti during the slave trade in the 19th century. A well-known myth associated with the religion involves a girl, Princess Sikan, who captures an enchanted fish. Sikan shows it to her father, who tells her she must never speak of it again, but Sikan does tell the leader of another tribe about it. Her punishment for the betrayal was death. Ayon symbolizes the imposed silence in her work by removing the mouths of the figures.

Because the society of Abakua had created so few images of its mythology, Ayon was mostly free to interpret the imagery as she wished. She then addressed real issues, such as censorship, violence, intolerance, exclusion, control mechanisms, and power structures through the lense of her cast of mythological characters.

Tragically, the artist suddenly took her own life at the age of 32. Her first solo exhibition in Europe opened November 17th of this year in Spain.

https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/belkis-ayon

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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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Landscape, 1882 oil on panel 12 x 16 inches signed and dated original frame

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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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Head of a Dancer (Harald Kreutzberg), 1937 cast bronze with brown patina 12-1/4 inches high (without base) signed and numbered 26 Provenance: Purchased by consignor from Adolphus Ealey, Director of the Barnett-Aden Gallery in 1979.

Literature: Barnett-Aden Collection, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1940; p. 40 (a plaster cast) Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, Beach Institute/King-Tindell Museum, Savannah, GA, 1991; p. 50. (bronze version;dated 1937) Harald Kreutzberg was a dancer and an acquaintance of the artist.

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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, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland College Park, MD, 2020; 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 was also part of the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983, 2017-2021.

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Morning (Carolina Morning), 1979 color lithograph on wove paper 19-1/4 x 24-7/8 inches signed, AP GG#91 Illustrated: Gelburd, A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, 80.

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Quilting Time, 1979 color lithograph 18 x 23-1/8 inches, full margins signed and numbered, 42/125 GG#93

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Circe Turns a Companion of Odysseus into a Swine, from the Odysseus Suite, 1979 Color screenprint on wove paper 18-5/8 x 23-1/2 inches Signed and numbered GG#65

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Merry Christmas, 1974 watercolor, and ink over lithograph on paper 22 x 17 inches signed, dated, and inscribed, Merry Christmas

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Salome (John the Baptist) from the portfolio Prevalance of Ritual, 1974 lithograph 40 x 32 inches signed, dated, numbered 22/37 and inscribed, PR III, HC aside from the edition of 100 GG#42, 152 Printed by Sirocco Screenprints, New York. Published by Cordier & Ekstrom, New York, and Ives-Sillman, Inc., New Haven, CT, with the blindstamp.

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Early Carolina Morning, posthumous print, endorsed by the estate of the artist serigraph and silkscreen on Coventry Rag paper 21 x 29 3/4 inches (image) 26 x 33 3/4 inches (sheet) facsimile signature, numbered, 143/950

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Roots, 1977 color lithograph (Poster for T.V. Guide cover) 24 x 18 inches (full margins) unsigned (many of these are unsigned) Artist’s proof aside from the edition of 150 GG #60

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CLEVELAND BELLOW (1946-2009) Catch a Falling Star (Tammi Terrell), 1973 acrylic and screen print on board 36 x 80 inches signed and dated

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CLEVELAND BELLOW (1946-2009)

Tammi Terrell Some of have labeled my particular style as social protest, but I beg to differ. If I would label my work at all, it would be called social reality.

Cleveland Bellow, Black Artists on Art v. 2, Lewis/Waddy, , p. 102-103 Cleveland Bellow worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland (BFA, MA). He also worked as an intern at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. He worked as a painter, graphic designer, curator and consultant. He exhibited at the Oakland Museum, San Francisco Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art and many other venues around the Bay Area.

Tammi Terrell was a star singer for Motown Records during the 1960s, and sang with Marvin Gaye on several Top 40 singles, including Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing. On October 14, 1967, as the two were performing at Hampden-Sydney College, Terrell collapsed in to Gaye’s arms. Later it was discovered she had a brain tumor and after a series of unsuccessful surgeries, she succumbed to the illness (March 16, 1970) at the age of just 24. Her death devastated Gaye, and it is said that the event led him to depression and drug abuse. Gaye’s masterpiece, What’s Going On, released in 1971, was in part themed around his reaction to his friend’s death.

The visual symbolism of Catch a Falling Star is powerful and emotional. The progressively strengthening star is conversely mirrored with the halo-like image above the subject’s head fading. Bellow frequently combined elements of silkscreen and acrylic paint to formulate his images. Another well-known work by Bellow, Catch Eve , employed the same technique as this work (REF: West Coast ’74: The Black Image, Crocker Art Gallery Association, 1974, catalog accompanying the exhibit).

Bellow’s work was recently included in the exhibition, Soul of a Nation Art in the Age of Black Power which wrapped its run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on August 30, 2020.

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CLEVELAND BELLOW (1946-2009)

Cleveland Bellow pictured with his work Catch Some California Time, 1973; Black Art: an International Quarterly, v. 2, no. 3, Spring 1978, p.39

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DeVOICE BERRY (20th century) Young Fisherman, 1971 charcoal and graphite on paper 34 1/2 x 44 inches signed and dated, frame Exhibited: Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, February 8-March 19, 1972. Entry #6, Young Fisherman, listed in the catalog for the exhibit.

Provenance: Private collection, Los Angeles, CA. DeVoice Berry was born in Montgomery Alabama and worked in San Diego and Los Angeles, California. He earned his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). This exhibition at LACMA included works by David Hammons, Timothy Washington, Betye Saar, Noah Purifoy, John Outterbridge and Yvonne Cole Meo. His work was chosen for the 1974 California Regional Biennial (Los Angeles).

Samella Lewis wrote this about Berry’s work: ...reflect(s) a mixture of symbolism and realism. An artist who captures the inner mood of his subjects and exhibits a great capacity for compassion, Berry is able to combine his sensitive style with a high degree of drama and a great faculty for design. Berry is concerned with social issues, and his highly expressive themes extend beyond the realm of personal matters.

Art: African American, Lewis (1978), p. 214.

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DAWOUD BEY (b. 1953)

Photographs from the Harlem USA portfolio, 2005 carbon pigment prints on acid free Hanhemühle Rag paper, printed by Black Point Editions, Chicago, 2005, from photographer’s original negatives and vintage prints 20 x 16 inches (sheet size) from an edition of 15 with 5 Artist Proofs all signed, dated, and numbered 1/15 verso Bey grew up in Queens, NY and went to the Benjamin Cardozo High School. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in the late 1970s, before earning his BFA in photography at Empire State College, and an MFA from Yale University in 1993. Bey’s earliest images, in the style of street photography, documented the day-to-day life of the people living in Harlem (Harlem USA , 1975-1979). He exhibited them at the Studio Museum in Harlem at the completion of the project (in 2012, the Art Institute of Chicago mounted an exhibit of the photos and added several that had not been included in the first showing).

Bey’s style of documentary photography develops a close relationship with the subject—frequently young people, because Bey believes the look and behavior of the young people of a particular neighborhood reveals much about the overall vibe of a place. He has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, High Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art among otherr, and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Bey is currently a Professor of Art at Columbia College in Chicago (since 1998).

Photo: Dawoud Bey at Lake Erie, 2018; Mike Majewski.

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Two Women at a Parade, 1978 carbon pigment print on acid free Hanhemühle Rag paper 6-3/8 x 9-1/2 inches (image) 20 x 16 inches (sheet) signed, dated, and numbered 1/15 verso

A Woman With Hanging Overalls, 1978 carbon pigment print on acid free Hanhemühle Rag paper 6-3/8 x 9-1/2 inches (image) 20 x 16 inches (sheet) signed, dated, and numbered 1/15 verso

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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.

“I recognized at once the Africanisms in our life in America, which we simply had not been able to recognize and to claim,” 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.

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Mother and Child, c. 1970 conté crayon on paper 18-1/2 x 17 inches (image) 24 x 18 inches (sheet) signed

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

The Seed, 1983 lithograph on Arches rag paper 16 1/2 x 22 inches (image) 25 1/4 x 35 1/2 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, Artist Proof VIII

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

Wash Day, 1969 conté crayon and graphite on paper 41-1/4 x 29-3/4 inches (full sheet) signed and dated

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

Pearl Buck’s Good Earth no. 3, 1965, pencil drawing on wove paper 12 x 19-1/2 inches signed, dated, and titled original illustration for The Good Earth which appeared in Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books for Young Readers, published in 1966.

The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by American author Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatized family life in a Chinese village in the early 20th century. The novel was included in Life Magazine’s list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. In 2004, the book returned to the bestseller list when chosen by television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah’s Book Club.

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

Pearl Buck’s Good Earth, 1965, pencil drawing on wove paper 12 x 19-1/2 inches signed, dated, and titled

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ALEXANDER “SKUNDER” BOGHOSSIAN (1937-2003) Untitled, c. 1978 acrylic and metallic paint on tar paper laid down on board (original) 43 x 28 inches signed Provenance: Dr. and Mrs. Robert Galloway, TX The New York Times, reporting the artist’s death in 2003, described Boghossian as “an artist who played an important role in introducing European modernist styles into Africa and who, as a longtime resident of the United States, became one of the best-known African modern artists in the West.” It is quite likely that Boghossian would have objected to this description or at least to the danger of over-simplification. Elizabeth Giorgis, a contributing editor for Ethiopian Register, writing about an interview she had with Boghossian, stated: His conversations allude to the cultural universe of Third world dependency where creativity as well as culture, history and pride has been pulled along in the whirligig of European meaningless behavior. To him, people of color through no fault of their own but through the systematic destruction of their culture, have imitated everything European and have despised traditional culture and race while they fail to understand their own true needs.

Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that Boghossian used the knowledge of European artistic styles he discovered while in Paris when he returned to Ethiopia in the mid 1960s to express his true Ethiopian self, and in doing this, taking great care not to hide his true identity with the mask of a stranger.

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ALEXANDER “SKUNDER” BOGHOSSIAN (1937-2003)

Skunder Boghossian was born in Ethiopia in 1937. He received a government scholarship in 1955 to study art at St. Martin’s School, Central School, and the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. In 1957 he moved to Paris where he studied and taught at L’École des Beaux Arts and L’Académie de la Grande Chaumiere.

In Paris, his artistic style was shaped by his personal experiences and the accumulation of his knowledge of modern Western art. He worked closely with African American artists and was influenced by the works of Paul Klée, André Breton, Georges Braques, and Max Ernst, as well as Afro-Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam and West African and Coptic art. His work incorporates diverse techniques and media with vibrant color, symbols, and motifs. Boghossian described all of his work as “a perpetual celebration of the diversity of blackness.” Boghossian met Marilyn Pryce in Paris who was originally from Tuskegee, Alabama and was the daughter of artist/landscape architect, Edward Pryce. The two were married in 1966 in Tuskegee, and later divorced in 1970.

Boghossian was an influential teacher in Paris, Ethiopia, and at Howard University’s School of Fine Arts (1974-2000). He was the first contemporary African artist to have his work purchased by the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1963. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired his painting Juju’s Wedding (1964) in 1966, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African Arts acquired several of his paintings in 1992. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Howard University, Washington DC; Merton Simpson Gallery, NY; and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The exhibition, Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora, opened in 2003 at the Museum of the National Center for Afro American Artists, Boston, MA, just days before Boghossian’s death.

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ALEXANDER “SKUNDER” BOGHOSSIAN (1937-2003)

Rosalind Jeffries, regarding the exhibition held at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1972, wrote: Skunder has continually evolved in the past under the influence of African philosophy and mythology. There is one certain thing about his creations: they are pregnant with energy. His canvases bear witness to energy and force at a fantastic range of intensity, or vibrations. The energy is sometimes overpowering, violent, sometimes a mere frenzy, sometimes calm, sometimes a lyrical clear melody, but always in perpetual motion. These forces are not only inner forces but they relate to outer moons, suns, air, atmosphere, shifting patterns and images derived from Ethiopian sacred and folk art used throughout the centuries.

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SHIRLEY LEE BOLTON (1945-1984) Cityscape, 1968 oil on masonite 24 x 26 inches signed and dated Born in Lexington, Georgia in 1945, painter and printmaker Shirley Bolton received her BFA in 1966 and her MFA in 1970 from the University of Georgia. Bolton’s work became consistently more abstract throughout her career. This work is close in date and style to her prize-winning oil and collage of 1969 titled Tenement. She exhibited at the High Museum (Atlanta), the National Exhibition of Black Artists (Washington, DC), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), Southern Illinois University, University of Georgia (solo, 1970) and Atlanta University (1964-1970).

She was included in New Vitality in Art: The Black Woman at Mount Holyoke College, and Black Artists: South at the Huntsville Museum of Art (1979). She was given a solo show at Spellman College.

Her work is included in the collections of the Carnation Milk Company, Los Angeles, Clark Atlanta University, and the University of Georgia, Athens. The artist passed away in 1984 in Pensacola, Florida. REF: St James Guide to Black Artists, Black Artists on Art, and Black Artists: South (catalog to the exhibition).

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FRANK BOWLING (b. 1934) Mother Approaching Sixty, 2003 color photo-etching, soft-ground and spite bite aquatint on paper, later mounted to foam core 26 x 21 3/4 inches (image) 35 x 30 inches (sheet) signed, dated, and numbered 4/40 blind stamp Bowling was born in Bartica, Essequibo, Guyana. He moved to England in 1953 and served in the Royal Air Force. When he was 23, he enrolled in the Royal College of Art in London, and also studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (also in London). He first visited New York in 1962, the year he graduated from university. He eventually took up residency there in 1966.

In the early 1970s, Bowling began melding personal memories with colorful abstraction, and his work—throughout his career—reflect his interest and value of history. Bowling had a solo show in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and since then has exhibited extensively. His work is in countless important private and institutional collections. Bowling currently lives in London, UK. Frank Bowling, 2019. Photo by Mathilde Agius.

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AL BRIGHT(1940-2019) Deja Vu, 1981 oil on canvas with elements of assemblage 64 x 46 inches inscribed on stretcher that the artist gave the work to his son Alfred Bright, Jr. in 1988 signed, titled, dated Painter and educator Alfred Bright was a much beloved member of the fine arts faculty at Youngstown State University, OH. Indeed, he was the first African American professor to teach full time there and became known as the “Father of Black Studies” for his development of the highly successful Africana studies program. Bright had graduated from the university with a degree in art education and went on to receive his MFA in painting from Kent State University.

His work was featured in exhibition annuals at the Butler Institute of Art, OH from 1981-1994 and 2003. In addition, a 25 year retrospective of his work was held there in 1985. An oil titled Fertility Piece, is in the collection of the Canton Museum of Art, OH. The Butler Institute of American Art, Kent State University Gallery, and the Harmon and Harriet Kelly Collection of African-American Art also include works by Bright in their collections.

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FREDERICK J. BROWN(1945-2012) Madonna, 1983 oil on linen 42 1/4 x 34 1/4 inches signed, titled and dated verso Provenance: the artist to Davis McLain Gallery, Houston, TX (1983) to private collection, Houston, TX Brown was born in Greensboro, Georgia, but moved with his family to Chicago when he was only a month old. He grew up there on the south side of the city—an area with a rich art heritage. In 1963, he enrolled at the University of Illinois School of Architecture, and two years later, transferred to Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL. There he studied under visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller, the father of the geodesic dome, among other things. When he graduated, he returned to Chicago and went to work for the Chicago Tribune in the advertising department. In 1970, he moved to New York and immersed himself in the art scene there in Soho.

“In the late 1970s, Brown’s tendency toward figuration progressed in works that demonstrate his ‘adept interpretations of German expressionism, cartoon imagery, and folk elements.”

(Excerpt from essay, Dr Lowery Stokes Sims and Bentley E. Brown) In 1983, the year this work was painted, he began an association with Marlborough Gallery, and in his first exhibit there, one of his paintings was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same year, he exhibited at Davis/Mclain Gallery in Houston, Texas, where this work was purchased by its present owner.

Brown’s work is included in the collections of Brooklyn Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Portrait Gallery, Kemper Museum (Kansas City), Smart Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Phoenix Art Museum.

Photo: Ralph Gibson, New York, New York (c) 1988

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SELMA BURKE (1900-1995) Embrace, 1971 carved stone 21 inches high signed Provenance: The artist's studio to Dr. John Young (10/10/1999) thence by descent to Patric Ellholm, Sweden.

Dr Young purchased the sculpture at a silent auction to benefit the "Selma Burke Scholarship Fund". This work is also listed in the inventory of works in the Selma Burke Gallery.

Copies of receipts of these accompany the lot.

Burke and her sculpture of Booker T. Washington, c. 1935; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Instituttion

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SELMA BURKE (1900-1995)

Resting Child, 1971 carved stone 21 inches high Provenance: The artist's studio to Dr. John Young (10/10/1999) thence by descent to Patric Ellholm, Sweden.

Dr Young purchased the sculpture at a silent auction to benefit the "Selma Burke Scholarship Fund". This work is also listed in the inventory of works in the Selma Burke Gallery. Copies of receipts of these accompany the lot.

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SELMA BURKE (1900-1995)

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010) Harriet Tubman, 2000 linocut print 21 x 16 1/2 inches (image) signed, dated and titled 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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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

Face of Africa, 1954-1986 print 19 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches signed titled and dated 1954 in the print, and signed in ink: "To Clarence Holland with best wishes, Margaret Burroughs, 1986" Clarence Holland was a prominent collector who lived on the Southside of Chicago.

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

Malcolm, 1986 print 19 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches signed and dated in ink: "To Mr. Clarence Holland, Margaret Burroughs, 1986"

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

Madonna and Child, 2005 print 23 x 16 inches (image) signed, titled and dated 6/04/05, initialed in plate.

Provenance: Eleanor Chatman, Chicago. Eleanor was a very close friend and long-time traveling companion of Dr. Burroughs, and had a large collection of her work.

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

The Pharoah, 2004 print 16 1/2 x 13 inches (image) signed, titled and dated 11/25/04.

Provenance: Eleanor Chatman, Chicago. Eleanor was a very close friend and long-time traveling companion of Dr. Burroughs, and had a large collection of her work.

Eleanor Chatman has published a book about her friendship and travels throughout the globe with Margaret Burroughs, entitled Me and Dr. B.

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WILLIAM CARTER (1909-1996) Untitled (Figural Abstract), 1974 gouache on paper 15 x 11 inches signed and dated 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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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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Three Women of America, 1990 lithograph 30-7/8 x 22-3/8 inches, full margins signed, titled, dated and numbered 4/30 AP, outside the edition of 120, in pencil, lower margin Printed by Lou Stovall's Workshop, Inc., Washington DC

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Mask, 1972 carved tropical wood 17-1/2 inches h x 4-1/2 (with base) 13-1/2 inches high (sculpture) 4 inches diameter initials incised on base, “EC” Provenance: The artist to private collection, thence by descent, Morgan Iglehart Ross, Houston, Texas.

Literature: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Lewis, 1984, 2000, p. 64-65.

Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpture, A Fifty-Year Retrospective, Lucinda H. Gedeon, ed., Neuberger Museum of Art, 1998. p.22.

Other works of the late 1960’s and 70’s, Magic Mask, 1971, Mask, 1972 and Singing Head of 1979, show an even more pronounced abstract quality and may be considered among the most stylistically radical works of Catlett’s career.

Gedeon, 22-23

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Glory, 1981 bronze with deep brown patina 14 x 9-1/2 x 10 inches artist’s incised initials This bust was exhibited in the exhibition Elizabeth Catlett Sculpture: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, the Neuberger Museum of Art, 1998 and is illustrated in the exhibition catalog of the same name p.84.

Another cast of this sculpture appears in Something All Our Own, the Grant Hill Collection of African-American Art, Nasher Museum of Art, 2004. The Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI also has a cast in their collection.

The subject of this sculpture is Dr. Glory Van Scott, performer, dancer and educator, who gained fame as the principal dancer with the Katherine Dunham, Agnes DeMille, and Talley Beatty dance companies and as a performer on Broadway in the 1960s and 70s. Ms. Van Scott was also the subject of a 1986 linoleum cut by Elizabeth Catlett.

Dr. Glory Van Scott with James Earl Jones, backstage at the Alvin Theatre in New York, 1968, during the run of The Great White Hope on Broadway. Photo by Bert Andrews.

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Lovey Twice, 1976 lithograph 22 x 30 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 25/100

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

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DANA CHANDLER, JR. (b. 1941) AKA AKIN DURO I’m trying to get across to the black community that art can say something, dammit, and to them. I want my art to be for them and for the few whites, artists maybe, who can understand it and love it.

Chandler is best known for his Black Power art and activism. He grew up in the Roxbury Neighborhood of Boston, as did Allan R. Crite. In 1967, he attended the Massachusetts College of Art. Similarly to the graphic art of Emory Davis or the Africobra artists, Chandler’s work was a synthesis of fine art and propaganda . His most well-known work is Fred Hampton’s Door (2), which was featured in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. Edmund Barry Gaither, longtime director of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury, said this about Chandler’s work: Dana comes into his own in a moment when artists are being called upon, if you’re plugged into the vibe, to take a role in the social struggle…Dana participates in this new and stronger direction in which visual artists are being called to engage in art that is involved in Black revolutionary change.

Chandler, along with Gary Rickson and Sharon Dunn, painted Black Power murals in Boston inner-city, and thought of the entire city as a museum.

Black art is not a decoration. It’s a revolutionary force.

Photo: Jet Commercial Photographers (Boston, Mass.), March 26, 1981

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Lovers, 1970 color lithograph 17 x 11 inches signed, titled, dated, and inscribed in the image, Pan-African Artist, Boston

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DANA CHANDLER, JR. (b. 1941)

The Argument/Making Up, Black on Black Series, 1970 color lithograph 11 x 17 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated and inscribed in the plate, Pan African Artist

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DANA CHANDLER, JR. (b. 1941)

Together Brothers, 1970 color lithograph 11 x 17 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated and inscribed in the plate, Pan African Artist Boston

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BARBARA CHASE RIBOUD (b. 1939) Untitled, 1996 watercolor, ink drawing and peacock feather on paper in tondo 13-1/4 inches in diameter inscribed For Donald and Isabel, With thanks Barbara Chase-Riboud, Nov. 11, 1996 Paris, France Barbara De Wayne Chase was born and raised in Philadelphia, and her artistic endeavors were supported early by her father, as she enrolled in Fletcher Art School at the age of 7. She went on to receive a BFA and PhD from Temple University and a MFA from Yale University.

After 1960, she lived primarily in Paris and married French photo-journalist, Marc Riboud (divorced in 1981). Chase-Riboud works as a writer, poet, and sculptor. Her sculptural work celebrates the fragile contrasting relationships of the materials she uses, and similarly, her work in general ranges from monumental metal sculptures made with a blowtorch, hot knife and molten metal to delicate, contemplative and sensitive works as this one, centered around a peacock feather.

And out of love/ seated/ she birthed what Arp considered perfection/ between black thighs/ it dropped /backed by womb fires / glazed with ambrosia / swollen on goddess juice / egg shaped/ in white porcelain/ it left her/ floating on the surface / of primordial nebula / neither sky nor sea / neither space nor void / neither matter nor anti matter / but a cosmic cloud / illuminated by Hell’s / original light / rinsed with dry ice and / flowing like a river of agate / carried on the backs of / albino elephants / paving primeval rain forests where / peonies and pomegranates grow in groves.

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ED CLARK (1926-2019) Composition, 1955 acrylic and gouache on paperboard 18 x 22 inches signed, dated and inscribed Paris recto dedicated, To my dear friend Al recto inscribed Paris verso Ed Clark was born in New Orleans but moved to Chicago in early childhood. He served in the US Air Force between 1944-46, and from 1947-1951, attended the Art Institute of Chicago on the G.I. Bill. He traveled to Paris in 1952, and continued his studies at the L’Academie de la Grande Chaumiere for two years. Clark found the style of education to be much more lax in Paris than at the AIC, but he found inspiration in acquaintances and unlimited access to great works of art. He was particularly influenced by the Russian-born painter, Nicolas de Stael, whose work Clark found to be somewhere between hard-edge and the gestural abstraction popular in post-war Paris. Clark’s work became increasingly abstract and he began working in a much larger format. In 1953, he was included in an exhibition of American artists working in France at the Galerie Craven. He was the only African American represented.

He returned to New York in 1957 for a solo exhibition at the Brata Gallery in the East Village, and continued to show there through 1959, but with the emergence of Pop Art in the 60s, not much was happening for Clark in the US. He returned to Paris in 1966 for a one man show at Galerie Creuze. Since the 1960s, Clark began using a push broom to push the paint across the canvas lying on the floor. It is interesting to note that his first teacher at the AIC, Louis Ritman, introduced Clark to the work of Claude Monet, and Clark, upon first arriving in Paris, went to see Waterlilies at the Musée du Jeu de Paume, and the work had a significant effect on Clark.

Clark experimented with elliptical designs and both shaped canvases and painted, draped canvases. He was concerned with freeing the image concept from the limits of the canvas.

(REF: Explorations in the City of Light: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-1965, Valerie Mercer, The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1996.)

Ed Clark at his home studio in Chelsea in 2014.

Credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

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ED CLARK (1926-2019)

Untitled, 1987 Acrylic/canvas 20 x 24 inches dated

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ED CLARK (1926-2019)

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DAN CONCHOLAR (b. 1939) Untitled, c. 1970 acrylic and collage on canvas 48 x 48 inches signed Dan Concholar was born in San Antonio, Texas. His father was a black cowboy and trained horses. His family moved to Phoenix when he was young, and before finishing high school, he moved to Los Angeles to live with his sister. He enrolled at the Otis Art Institute and took classes with Charles White.

He also met David Hammons, John Riddle, Jr., and Timothy Washington while there.

In 1969, he became involved with the Black Artists Council, a group concerned with sharing information and raising the awareness of the works of black artists to a larger audience. The BAC effectively lobbied the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the 1970s, bringing about some very important exhibitions for black artists.

Concholar was very active in the LA art scene, exhibiting at Brockman Gallery, Gallery 32, and Ankrum Gallery. His friend, artist David Hammons convinced him to move to New York in 1980, and he was introduced to Linda Goode Bryant, who was the founding director of Just Above Midtown Gallery. Bryant’s roster included several artists who had moved from LA: Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Marion Hassinger, and Houston Conwill.

Concholar’s work was included in the exhibition, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980.

Dan Concholar - Hammer Museum

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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015) Jewels/ Theme V, 1985 mezzotint with etching in black and color aquatint with etching from multiple plates on ivory wove paper 23 x 16-1/4 inches (full margins) signed, titled, and numbered 24/125 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, co-founded 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.

For more information on Eldzier Cortor: Eldzier Cortor through the Eyes of His Son

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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005) Waiting, 1968 lithograph on cream wove paper 13 x 12 inches (image), 16-1/2 x 15-1/8 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and inscribed AP 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.”

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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Lovers, 1938, printed 1987 lithograph on pale grey wove paper, 14 x 11-3/4 inches (image) (full margins) signed, titled and numbered 19/30 in pencil Published by Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, New York

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DEWEY CRUMPLER (b. 1949) Nine, 2009 mixed media construction, white and black Styrofoam,acrylic, acidetched glass 10 x 10 inches signed, titled, dated verso.

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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EMILIO CRUZ (1938-2004) Emilio Antonio Cruz was an African American of Cuban descent born in the Bronx. He studied at the Art Students League and The New School in New York, and finally at the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts. As a young artist in the 1960s, Cruz was connected with other artists who were applying abstract expressionism concepts to figurative art such as Lester Johnson, Bob Thompson and Jan Muller. He combined human and animal figures with imagery from archaeology and natural history to create disturbing, dreamlike paintings. Harry Rand, Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, described Emilio Cruz as one of the important pioneers of American Modernism of the 1960s for his fusion of Abstract Expressionism with figuration. Cruz received a John Jay Whitney Fellowship as well as awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1968, Cruz received a grant from the Rockefeller-Danforth Foundation and moved to St. Louis where he was artist in residence for the Metropolitan Educational Center in the Arts as well as teaching at the People’s Art Center. He was a member of the Black Artists Group and was featured in a show of 10 paintings and 11 drawings at the Loretto-Hilton Center, Webster College.

Cruz moved to Chicago and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1970’s where he exhibited widely and was represented by the Walter Kelly Gallery. He wrote two plays, Homeostasis: Once More the Scorpion and The Absence Held Fast to Its Presence.

These were first performed at the Open Eye Theater in New York in 1981, and later were included in the World Theater Festival in Nancy and Paris, France, and in Italy. In 1982 he returned to New York where he began to exhibit again. In the late 1980s he resumed teaching at Pratt Institute and at New York University.

Cruz’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Zabriskie Gallery, New York; Anita Shapolsky Gallery, NY; Walter Kelly Gallery, Chicago; Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1994, Cruz’s work was shown as part of the American contingent at the IV Biennial Internacional de Pintura en Cuenca, Ecuador. His last show, I Am Food I Eat the Eater of Food, was held at the Alitash Kebede Gallery in Los Angeles in 2004.

His work is held in many collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.

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Untitled (Figures), 1983 pastel on Arches paper 22 1/2 x 29 1/2 inches signed and dated

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MICHAEL CUMMINGS (b.1945) Cummings is considered to be one of the nation’s leading African American male quilters.

He grew up in L.A. and attended Los Angeles City College before moving to New York City in 1970. He earned a BA in art history from SUNY-Empire State College; he also attended the New School for Social Research .

He started his career as a collage artist and painter in 1972. Soon after, he taught himself how to quilt and began working in fabric. He had his first solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1976. He also exhibited at the Akron Art Museum, Bates College, and the International Quilt Festival in Japan. His work was included in an exhibition titled, Emerging Artists: Figurative Abstraction, at the California Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles, California (1988-1989).

Cummings’ quilts are in the collections of notable institutions and private collections, including: William H. And Camille O. Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Alonzo Mourning, Renwick Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Brooklyn Museum, Getty Center for Education in the Arts, and the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture.

REF: Black Art an International Quarterly, Vol 3, Number 1 (1978), Profile of Michael A. Cummings, p. 26-27.

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Rock de Cradle Joe, 1999 illustration for the book In the Hollow of Your Hand fabric collage 24 x 24 inches signed, titled, and dated verso Provenance: The artist

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MICHAEL CUMMINGS (b.1945)

Photo from the Michael Cummings website.

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MICHAEL CUMMINGS (b.1945)

James Baldwin: Born Into A Lie #4, 2019 quilted fabric, combs, beadwork 70 x 54 inches signed and dated Provenance: The artist

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AVEL De KNIGHT (1921-1995) In our world of pristine, hard-edged materialism to encounter an artist of such unabashedly romantic temperament as Avel de Knight is a palliative experience. When persuaded to divulge the secret dreams that spark the “nether-world” landscapes of his work, de Knight rather matter-of-factly reveals his romance with the Past—from which one may glean the most pleasurable of memories—and his pre-occupation with the Future—which is idealized in its yet unrealized state. For him the Present is but a time and space for which one can reminisce and search for the Ideal. The object of this journey is by necessity elusive, and one constantly strives and yet never quite attains it. We might be tempted to view this pursuit as perverse and even masochistic, but de Knight is quick to note that this Ideal, while ever elusive, does provide him with the means to rejuvenate his love of and belief in beauty. This sustains him through the more piquant unrelenting inescapable realities of the Present.

—Lowery Sims, former Associate Curator of 20th Century Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Director, Studio Museum in Harlem, Myths and Mirage, The Art of Avel de Knight, catalog accompanying the exhibition held at Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums, 2001.

De Knight studied at the Pratt Institute form 1941-42 before serving in the U.S. Army (194345); he continued his study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris on the G.I. Bill.

He returned to the U.S. in 1956 and exhibited extensively, winning numerous awards. In 1967, his work, Mediterranean, was awarded the American Watercolor Society Prize, Grand Prize and Gold Medal for the Centennial Exhibition, and was acquired by the American Watercolor Society and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1988, the same watercolor was included in the exhibit, Faces and Figures: Selected Works by Black Artists (Met). De Knight later taught at the National Academy School of Fine Arts in New York.

De Knight’s medium of choice was watercolor, although he did also work in gouache and casein as well.

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Untitled, c. 1980 watercolor on cream wove paper 11 x 14-1/4 inches signed

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AVEL De KNIGHT (1921-1995)

Untitled (Pyramid), c. 1980 watercolor on cream wove paper 12 x 13 inches signed

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AVEL De KNIGHT (1921-1995)

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LOUIS DELSARTE (1944-2020) Delsarte grew up in Brooklyn and attended the Pratt Institute (BFA) and also the University of Arizona in Tucson (MFA). He also taught art throughout his career, including at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

Delsarte was influenced by jazz music and has attempted to represent its spontaneity and rhythm in his work. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, California African-American Art Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art . He was also commissioned to execute several important mural projects in cities throughout the country.

His technique is instantly recognizable. His colorful compositions are intentionally flattened and his brushwork causes a “surface tension” that is reminiscent of a reflection of the scene being viewed in choppy water. The figures and even the inanimate objects are buzzing with energy.

This article appeared in the NY Times announcing his passing earlier this year:

Louis Delsarte, A Muralist of the Black Experience Dies at 75.

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Jazzin in Birdland, c. 1995 color screenprint 20-1/4 x 24 inches (image) 25 x 27-1/4 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and numbered 108/125

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LOUIS DELSARTE (1944-2020)

Heaven and Earth, 1998 color offset lithograph 21-1/2 x 28 inches signed, titled and numbered 79/100 Published by Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, PA

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LOUIS DELSARTE (1944-2020)

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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.

Dempsey was a prolific painter and worked on as many as six canvasses at one time, switching as his moods changed.

Photo: Dempsey painting at the Plaza, Washington DC, Richard Dempsey papers, 19291989, bulk 1960s-1980s. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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Jamaica, c. 1975 watercolor and ink on paper 22 x 30 inches signed and titled

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RICHARD DEMPSEY (1909-1987)

Boy in a Hat, 1944 charcoal drawing on paper 16 x 12 inches signed and dated

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RICHARD DEMPSEY (1909-1987)

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936) Honky Tonk, 1996 color lithograph 31 x 17 inches (image) 38-1/2 x 24 inches signed and numbered 8/30 AP outside the edition of 250 Mojo Portfolio blind stamp LL 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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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Morning Meditation, c. 1990 watercolor on paper 23 x 17 inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Untitled, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 17 x 11inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Untitled (Portrait of a Woman), c. 1980 mixed media collage 10-1/2 x 5-1-/2 inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Untitled (Portrait of a Man, c. 1980 mixed media collage 10 x 6 inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Untitled, c. 1990 charcoal drawing on paper mounted on linen 11 x 8-1/2 inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Full Moon, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 24 x 13-3/4 inches signed and titled verso

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Backyard, 1996 color lithograph 27-1/2 x 16-1/2 inches (image) 36-1/4 x 25-1/2 inches (sheet) signed and numbered 14/30 AP outside the edition of 250 Mojo Portfolio blind stamp LL

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Garden Romance, 1996 color lithograph 24-1/2 x 15 inches (image) 32 x 21-1/4 inches (sheet) signed and numbered 10/30 AP outside the edition of 250 Mojo Portfolio blind stamp LL

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Untitled, Two Figures, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 24 x 14 inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

The Family, c. 1995 color lithograph 20 x 18 inches (image) 26 x 21-1/2 inches (sheet) signed and titled; AP

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

Jumpin’ and Jivin’, c. 1996 mixed media collage on board 23 3/4 x 23 3/4 inches signed

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JAMES DENMARK (b. 1936)

The Card Players, c.1980 mixed media collage on board 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 signed; titled verso

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FRANK DILLON (1865-1954) Still Life, 1941 oil on board 9 x 11 inches signed and dated Frank J. Dillon was born in Mt. Holly, New Jersey in 1866. He studied at St. Augustine College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and continued his studies at Oberlin College until 1889.

Dillon was a draftsman and designer for the Hirst Smyrna Rug Company in New Jersey and later worked as a stained glass designer for Oesterle Glassworks and Marcus Glassworks in Philadelphia. He was 63 years old when he exhibited at the Harmon Foundation in 1929, receiving an honorable mention, and in 1933, he returned with two still lifes.

Dillon continued to show his work at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library,1933; Texas Centennial, 1936; Dillard University, New Orleans, 1938; and the Library of Congress, 1940-41, among others. Most recently, the Indianapolis Museum of Art included one of Dillon's paintings in an exhibit addressing artists who were painting during the Harlem Renaissance (2006). Several of his works are reproduced in Against the Odds: African-Artists and the Harmon Foundation, Gary Reynolds and Beryl Wright; The Newark Museum, 1989.

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JEFF DONALDSON (1932-2004) Donaldson was a principal figure in the Black Arts Movement. He was a co-founder of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC, pronounced, OBA-see), he was a contributor to the Wall of Respect in Chicago (1968), and co-founded AFRICOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists).

He studied at University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (BA) and the Institute of Design (Illinois Institute of Technology, also known as the New Bauhaus, in Chicago; MFA, 1963), and Northwestern University (Ph.D, 1974).

These early watercolors serve as a preview to his later concerns with figurative subjects and flattened and fragmented color-block images associated with his work in AFRICOBRA. His work was recently featured in the exhibit, Soul of a Nation, Art in the Age of Black Power.

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Guitar Player, 1959 watercolor and ink on paper 8 x 11-1/4 inches signed and dated

Saxophone Player, c. 1959 watercolor and ink on paper 11 x 7-3/4 inches signed

Trumpet Player, 1959 watercolor and ink on paper 7-1/2 x 18 inches signed and dated

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020) Artist, curator, scholar and distinguished professor emeritus David Driskell was born in Eatonton, GA in 1931. He completed the art program at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 1953. He went on to attend Howard University and received his MFA from the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. Prof. Driskell explored postgraduate study in art history at the Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in The Hague.

He began his career as an educator at Talledega College in 1955. In 1977, he joined the faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he remained for the rest of his career. Upon his retirement, the David C. Driskell Center was established to honor his legacy and dedication to preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture. In 1976, Prof. Driskell curated the important exhibition, Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750- 1950, which was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has authored multiple exhibition catalogs throughout his career.

As an artist, he worked in collage and mixed media -oil paint, acrylic, egg tempera, gouache, ink, marker, and collage on paper and on canvas (stretched and unstretched). Prof. Driskell has worked with the Experimental Printmaking Institute of Lafayette college and Raven Editions. The exhibition, Evolution: Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell, held in 2009 at the High Museum of Art, GA was the first exhibition to highlight his printwork.

Prof. Driskell’s work has recently been included in David Driskell: Artist & Scholar of the African American Experience, Oct. 2019 - Jan. 2020, Morris Museum of Art, GA; David Driskell: Resonance, Paintings 1965-2002, 2019, DC Moore Gallery, NY. His work has also been featured in the following group exhibitions: Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, Feb. 29 - May 24, 2020, Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.; Tell Me Your Story, Feb. 8 - May 17, 2020, Kunsthal Kade, Amsterdam; The Seasons, Nov. 16, 2019 - March 1, 2020, Nassau County Museum of Art, NY; and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The University of Maryland’s David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and African Diaspora is dedicating this academic year to commemorating its namesake’s life and work—combining teaching, art history scholarship and writing, and curation and the practice of art.

Photo: David Hills, Down East magazine, March 2017

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Buga-boo, 1989 Color screenprint 22 x 29-1/2 inches signed and dated AP

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020)

Night Vision, 2007 screenprint, relief, etching, monoprint, collage 35-3/4 x 24-1/4 inches (image) 41-1/2 x 28-1/2 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, numbered AP IV Printed by the Experimental Printmaking Institute, Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., founded 1996 The original painting, Night Vision (for Jacob Lawrence), 2007, collage and gouache on paper, is in the exhibition, David Driskell Icons of Nature and History currently being held at the Phillips Collection, October 6, 2021 - January 9, 2022.

From the website of the High Museum of Art about the painting: Artist Jacob Lawrence was an important mentor and colleague of Driskell’s, and their paths intersected several times, including at Fisk and Skowhegan. In this homage, a figure bathed in a central core of light that seems self-generated emerges from the blue of the night. The bifurcated mask-like face includes collage elements from Driskell’s 1986 lithograph, Spirits Watching. Driskell used mask-like faces to express the power and continuing presence of the ancestors.

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020)

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020)

Chinatown, 1956 oil on board 9 x 12 inches signed Provenance: The artist to Earl Hooks. Driskell and Hooks were friends and worked together at Fisk University after the former invited the latter there in 1967 to teach (Hooks remained 30 years; Driskell arrived a year earlier, and remained 10 years).

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020)

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MAE ENGRON (1933-2007) Untitled, c. 1980 oil on canvas 46 1/2 x 49 inches initialed, M.E. Mae Engron’s work was recently featured at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, IN in March of 2021, in a special exhibition titled, Treasures from the Vault: Mae Engron (the museum acquired a work by the artist in 2021). Engron was born and remained in Indianapolis, Indiana. Similarly to Alma Thomas, she came to art later in her life. She was married and divorced, raised children and worked for the postal service for 7 years before obtaining her BFA from the Herron School of Art (Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, IUPUI) in 1984.

Jill Moniz, a representative of the artist’s estate provided a statement from the artist: I paint the way I feel. When my life is in order and everything is running smoothly, I paint geometric. When I’m down I paint lines. When I feel love I paint flowers. When Im feeling easy, I paint flowing paintings.

Treasures from the Vault: Mae Engron, Lauren Wolfer, Associate Curator of Special Collections & Archives.

In 1991, Mae was included in There But for Grace: a tribute to pathfinders and visionaries, a group show of nationally recognized artists at the Gallery Tanner in Los Angeles, CA.

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LAWRENCE FINNEY (b. 1963) Painter Lawrence Finney was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1963. He attended Pratt Institute from 1982-1984 and the School of Visual Arts, NY in 1985. He is known for his stylized figures which draw their inspiration from the work of Charles White, George Tooker, Mexican muralists and social realism. In 2002, five of his paintings were included in the exhibition Black Romantic at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work was also featured in the 2006 University of Houston exhibition Highlights from the Collection of Corrine Jennings and Joe Overstreet.

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Joy of Life, 1997 oil on canvas 28 x 24 inches Provenance: The artist to private collection.

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La TOYA RUBY FRAZIER (b. 1982) Frazier is an artist and professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA from Syracuse University. She continued her studies through the Whitney Museum of Art Independent Study Program and was the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow for Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin.

Inspired by Gordon Parks, she uses photography to address issues of racism, deindustrialization, environmental degradation, and relationships between individuals and spaces. Her work was included in important major group exhibitions, such as the New Museum’s The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus; Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale (2011) and the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She mounted a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2013, A Haunted Capital.

Frazier describes her work as “the collaboration between my family and myself (which) blurs the line between self-portraiture and social documentary”. She grew up in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a town decimated by the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s-80s, and her work often focuses on the notion that the plight of Braddock is a microcosm of virtually everywhere in its specific manifestation. Frazier links her narrative in the past in referencing the work of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, and brings it forward in time, recognizing that for one to appreciate and understand the contemporary portrait of a family or society, one must know the respective histories, and frequently they correspond.

Photo: Bret Hartman/ TED

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Pier 54: A Human Right to Passage, 2015 lithograph on denim 16-1/2 x 24 inches accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered 8/25 (date of certificate, 10/15/2015)

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RAMON GABRIEL (1911-1960) Ramon Gabriel was a Chicago artist active in the 1930s-40s. He exhibited at Howard University, Washington D.C., 1941; Southside Community Art Center, Chicago, 1941, 1945; and McMillin Inc. Galleries, NY, 1941. A painting titled, Pool Room, 1937, by Gabriel was included in the exhibition, New York/Chicago WPA and the Black Artist which was held at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1978. His work is also included in the collection of Larry and Brenda Thompson, and is pictured in the book, Tradition Redefined, The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of American Art, 2009.

Gabriel worked in both watercolor and oil, but in either case, developed cubist compositions including African Americans figures involved in everyday activities.

1. Abstraction, c. 1940 oil and watercolor on paper 4-3/4 x 4 inches (image) 8 x 7-5/8 inches (sheet) signed 2. Conductor, c. 1940 watercolor on paper 4-3/4 x 3-3/4 inches (image) 5-7/8 x 4-5/8 inches (sheet) signed 3. Tropical Landscape with Automobile, c. 1935 watercolor on paper 2-3/4 x 3-1/2 inches (image) 4-5/8 x 5-1/4 inches (sheet) signed 4. Two Drawings (Figure and Floral), c. 1940 pencil on envelope 2 x 1-1/2 inches, 2 x 1-3/4 inches (images) 3-3/4 x 6-1/2 inches (sheet) signed

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HERB GENTRY (1919-2003) Take the Water Please, 1983 oil on canvas 19-1/4 x 23-5/8 inches signed and dated Let experience be a part of you as a human being…Even though we’re black and we’ve been hurt by many people, we still have to give of ourselves. We sort of have to be universal.

Nor do we lose blackness by being universal.

Gentry was born in Pittsburgh, but was raised in Harlem before WWII, where he had some exposure to art under the programs of the WPA. He served in the war, first in North Africa and then in Germany. He returned to Europe in the latter 1940s and attended the Ecoles des Beaux Arts and the Academie de la Grande in Paris. Gentry loved Paris and believed there were many similarities between Harlem and Paris—they were both “world cities”, with many languages and cultures—and all embraced enthusiastically.

Gentry was more drawn to the European Cobra Group of painters, who practiced a bold, gestural, figurative form of expressionism, over the abstract expressionists who were gathering great popularity in the United States in the mid-20th century. Eventually, he took up residence in Sweden, and divided his time between there and the U.S.

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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.

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. Reinvention 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 88. 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. Sam Gilliam photographed on June 22, 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Marvin Joseph, Washington Post)

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Snow Drop White, 1985 mixed media assemblage 36 x 46 inches signed and dated Provenance: William Weege to private collection, Cincinnati.

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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)

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SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933)

Untitled, 2010 oil construction irregular shape, 18 x 35-1/2 inches signed and dated

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AL GOLDSBY (B. 1930) Tall Grass mid-century bronze sculpture 36 inches high 8-1/4 x 7 inches (wooden base) signed with artist’s incised initials Al Goldsby was born in Arkansas in 1930 and has lived and worked in Oregon for most of his life as a printmaker and sculptor. He was a student of Tom Hardy and his work is found in the collection of the Portland Art Museum, OR. He has completed several public commissions for sculptures located in Oregon. Although two of these works are figural, he is best known for his modernist representations of the natural world that reveal the interplay of wind and water on their environments.

His work will be included in the forthcoming exhibiiton, Black Artists of Oregon, from October 1, 2022 - April 9. 2023 at the Portland Art Museum.

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JONATHAN GREEN (b. 1955) Bessie Mae, 1995 color lithograph 42 x 31-1/8 inches, full margins signed, titled, dated, and numbered 16/175 Published by Mojo Portfolio, New York Jonathan Green was born in Gardens Corner, South Carolina, and raised in the home of his maternal grandmother, Eloise Stewart Johnson, where he learned the Gullah dialect and the culture of the Southeast. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, Green studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1982). His work has been heavily influenced by his Gullah heritage.

The scenes he depicts in his work focus on themes of work, love, belonging, and spiritually in the African American experience.

The Kinsey Collection; Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, Where Art and History Intersect, p. 144-145.

Green’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Morris Museum; The AfroAmerican Museum of Philadelphia; The Naples Museum of Art; Norton Museum, West Palm Beach, FL; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC, and the IFCC Cultural Center, Portland, OR. Gullah Images, The Art of Jonathan Green, was written by Pat Conroy in 1996.

For a video interview with Jonathan Green, please visit the following link, Seeking Jonathan Green .

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JONATHAN GREEN (b. 1955)

Daughters of the South, 1994 lithograph printed on Arches paper 31 x 21-1/4 inches signed and numbered 8/250 The original painting, Daughters of the South, is in the collection of the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA.

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JONATHAN GREEN (b. 1955)

First Sunday, 1993 lithograph 25 x 22-1/2 inches signed and numbered 6/250 Mojo Portfolio blind stamp LL

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JONATHAN GREEN (b. 1955)

Untitled (Bather), 1985 oil on masonite 29-1/2 x 24 inches signed and dated Provenance: The artist to private collection, thence by descent to Morgan Iglehart Ross, Houston, Texas

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JONATHAN GREEN (b. 1955)

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EUGENE GRIGSBY, Jr (1918-2013) Untitled, Black Fishermen, acrylic on canvas 25-1/2 x 36 inches signed Painter and printmaker J. Eugene Grigsby was born in Greensboro,North Carolina. As a boy, growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, he met self taught painter and stonemason, Walker Foster, who invited him into his studio. This chance meeting showed Grigsby that African Americans could pursue art and in doing so would empower himself and others. At Morehouse College, he studied under Hale Woodruff. Like so many young African American artists, Grigsby found in him a mentor, and a lasting influence on his work throughout his career. After graduating, he pursued a Master of Arts at Ohio State University and a Ph.D at New York University. His doctoral thesis was a comparative study of masks from the Northwest American Indian Kwakiutl Tribe and the Kuba tribe of the Belgian Congo.

Early in his career, Grisby was known for creating scenes in oil or acrylics and woodcuts, lithographs and serigraphs that reflected his interest in depicting scenes of the everyday African American life. As the events of the 1960’s unfolded, he was inspired to create more socially conscious art that reflected the struggles and triumphs of African Americans in resisting racism and oppression. By 1972, Grigsby had been working as a visiting lecturer in Africa, and his work incorporated African themes.

Grigsby is internationally recognized as an educator and writer. In 1977, he wrote the text, Art and Ethnics: Background for Teaching Youth in a Pluralistic Society, featuring the visual arts of African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos. It is highly regarded by both scholars and artists as a definitive work of the late 20th century. A revised edition was completed in 1997 which included Asian American visual art.

Grigsby continued to produce and show his work until his death in 2013. In 2001 a major retrospective of his work, The Art of Eugene Grigsby, Jr.: A Sixty-Five Year Retrospective, was held at the Phoenix Art Museum. In 2014, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina held the exhibition, Selected Works of J. Eugene Grigsby, Jr.: Returning to Where the Artistic Seed was Planted, which showcased 30 works of art that spanned his entire career. His work may be found in the collections of Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; Delta Art Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Malcolm X College, Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; and Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio.

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RAY GRIST (b. 1939) Seated, 1974 oil on canvas 36 x 30 inches signed, titled, dated Ray grew up in East Harlem, and studied at the Art Students League and the New School for Social Research. He exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem (his work is in the permanent collection) and Cinque Gallery. Grist’s work was included in the seminal exhibition, The Search for Freedom, African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975 at Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, May 19-July 14, 1991. He was also included in 25 Years of African American Art, organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1994, which showed at many venues across the country.

Grist traveled to Portugal in 1969, and when he returned to New York, he had his first solo show with Cinque at the New York Public Theater by Astor Place (1970). The year the painting Seated was created, the New York School Board, District 9, used his works for educational programs. In an interview from 1979, Grist stated: Our society has a basic racial structure. Black people certainly have a tradition which is different from the cultural tradition of mainstream in American society. I am not a White person; I am a Black person. And I am a painter. I give expression to my experience as a person, and necessarily , as a Black person, through painting.

Black Art, an International Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 50.

Cinque Gallery Interview Series: Ray Grist and Nanette Carter in Conversation – The Art Students League

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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.

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.

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.

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Boats at Concarneau, Brittany, France, oil on canvas 15-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches signed titled on label verso

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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, was released in June of 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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Troc, 1971 Silver gelatin print 6-1/4 x 4 inches

Untitled (Nude), 1971 Silver gelatin print 5-1/2 x 3-3/4 inches

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RANDELL HENRY (b. 1958) Henry is known for collages and paintings. He is the Community Coffee /Frank Hayden Endowed Professor and Curator of the Southern University Visual Arts Gallery at Southern University. He received a B.A. Degree in Fine Arts in May, 1979 from Southern University and the MFA degree in Painting and Drawing in December, 1982 from LSU. Influenced by the work of Romare Bearden, Henry began making collages in 1980; Blues and jazz music, family life and mythological themes were his subjects. He has participated in exhibitions in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, SCOPE, Art Copenhagen in Denmark (2013), the Makeshift Museum in Los Angeles, etc.

The African American Museum of Dallas held a 30 year retrospective of works by Henry which ran nearly a year and closed in March, 2018. Two “mini-retrospectives” of his work were held in 2020, at the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum and at the West Baton Rouge Museum. Each included collages from the 1980s. Two collages were purchased by the U.S. State Department for the permanent collection of the new U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia.

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Bluebird, 1981 oil and collage on canvas 30 x 48 inches signed and dated

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RANDELL HENRY (b. 1958)

Dancers, 1981 oil and collage on canvas 46 x 38 inches signed, dated and titled

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RANDELL HENRY (b. 1958)

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JOSEPH HOLSTON (b. 1944) Rhythmic Blues, 2000 etching on wove paper 7 7⁄8 x 7 7⁄8 inches (image) 14 3⁄4 x 14 in. (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 90/96 Painter and etcher, Joseph Holston began his career as a graphic artist after completing the Commercial Art Program at Chamberlain Vocational High School, Washington DC. By 1971, he was a full-time studio artist creating screenprints, etchings, paintings and collagraphs.

Inspired by Rembrandt’s prints, Holston began creating etchings in 1974. He incorporates an array of visual effects in his etchings, through the use of hard ground, soft ground and aquatint, as in Woman with Pipe (1974), one of his first prints, now included in the permanent collection of The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. His work has been featured in the solo exhibitions, JOSEPH HOLSTON: Recent Works: Realistic Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings, Nyangoma’s Gallery, Washington DC, 1983; A Glance at Life: The Works of JOSEPH HOLSTON, Spiral Gallery, NY, 1987; JOSEPH HOLSTON: Color in Freedom: Journey along the Underground Railroad, University of Maryland, 2009; and Limited Editions: JOSEPH HOLSTON Prints, 1974-2010, A Retrospective, University of Maryland, 2011.

His work was also included in African American Art Since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, 2012; Inaugural Exhibition, Galerie Myrtis, Washington DC, 2006; and The First Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition, Atlanta, GA, 1980.

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RAYMOND HOWELL (1927-2002) Harvest Dance, c. 1960 oil on masonite 30 x 24 inches signed 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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RICHARD HUNT (b. 1936) Untitled, 1967 welded steel 17-1/2 x 22 x 17 inches (including base which is 2-1/2 inches high) signed and dated Provenance: Al Lavergne, MI For more than three decades Richard Hunt’s status as the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture has remained unchallenged. Executed in welded and cast steel, aluminum, copper, and bronze, Hunt’s abstract creations make frequent references to plant, human, and animal forms.

While attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art purchased his sculpture, Arachne. Since then Hunt’s work has been exhibited extensively.

His first public commission was completed in 1959. His most recent public commission, The Light of Truth, Ida B. Wells National Monument, was unveiled July of this year in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Throughout his career, Hunt has created Swing Low for the National Museum of African American History and Culture; I Have Been to the Mountaintop, MLK Memorial, Memphis; Hero Constuction, Art Institute of Chicago; Spiral Odyssey, Romare Bearden Park, Charlotte, NC, among others.

HARLAN JACKSON (1918-1993) Born in Cleburne, TX in 1918. He moved to Hutchinson KS and attended Kansas State Teacher’s College to major in art. Shortly before WWII, he returned to Texas and worked as a cartoonist for the Houston Informer. During the war, he served in the Navy. After the war, he briefly joined the Harlem Globetrotters as a part of their backup team. Jackson’s talents in basketball were clearly less impressive than his artistic ones, so when the G.I. Bill afforded him the opportunity to continue his education, he pursued it.

He enrolled at the California School of Fine Art, where he studied with Abstract Expressionists Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko (Rothko taught in San Francisco during the summers of 1947 and 1949 and had the use of Still’s studio), Clay Spohn, and David Park. His notable classmates were John Grillo and James Keeney. In San Francisco, Jackson listened to bebop, met Maya Deren (a Ukrainian surrealist film-maker who influenced Jackson. The function of film, Deren believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving. She combined her interests in dance, Haitian Vodou and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Jackson contributed to and acted in a short surrealist film titled The Cage, authored by his friend Keeney in 1947), saw Katherine Dunham perform (Dunham’s modern interpretive dance influenced the art of both Jackson and Thelma Johnson Streat) , and with James Budd Dixon, started the North Beach Art Gallery, an artist’s cooperative. His first one-person show was at the Artist’s Guild in 1947. At this time the only recognized African American artist on the West Coast was Sargent Johnson. Jackson was quickly accepted and represented in shows sponsored by the San Francisco Art Association at the city art museum in 1946, 1948, and 1951.

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Jackson received a Rosenberg Traveling Fellowship in 1948 which enabled him to live and work in Haiti. It was here he met and befriended the artist Eldzier Cortor. Jackson renewed his acquaintance with Maya Deren in Haiti. During this period his works were notable for their deconstruction and reconstruction of Haitian masks and motifs using cubist elements. Upon his return, he studied at the Hans Hoffman School of Fine Art (1950-1), and shared a studio in NYC with Lilly Fenichel, another Abstract expressionist artist from California. Jackson and Fenichel frequented the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, well-known as a hang out of painters Rothko, Kline, Pollock and Resnick.

Eventually, Jackson and his wife, Jaki, moved to the Hamptons, across the street from painter Willem de Kooning, and among a community of Ab-ex artists: Motherwell, Pollock, Krasner, and Rothko. He continued to focus on works of experimental abstraction until the mid-1970’s. At this time his religious convictions began to preclude his artistic inclinations. Harlan Jackson died in relative obscurity in 1993.

Roberta Smith wrote a review for the NY Times regarding the exhibition, The Search For Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975; Kenkeleba House, NY (1991), and mentioned Jackson’s work: “Stronger still in touch and composition are the semi-abstract mask images, also from the late 40’s, by Harlan Jackson, a painter born in 1918 who studied with Mark Rothko.

In these highly tactile works, Picasso’s dissections of the human face, themselves inspired by African masks, are turned into attenuated abstractions whose facial features announce themselves slowly.”

Piscatorial, c. 1950 oil on canvas 38 x 18 inches signed

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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.

Introductory Image to a Twenty Image Suicide Documentary is equally literature, sculpture, photography and installation. It is an appropriation of an Elliot Erwitt photograph for Magnum, taken in 1950, which Julie Rodrigues Widholm, curator for the show at the MCA, suggests in the catalog for the exhibit, “(is) perhaps an oblique reference to the suicide at the end of Beatty’s novel.” She is referencing author Paul Beatty, an African American writer whose first novel, White Boy Shuffle , was a seminal text for Rashid Johnson, and which ends with a suicide. Another work by Johnson, Fatherhood as Described by Paul Beatty (2011) is one of his “shelf” works, and has various objects arranged on a literal shelf. The Erwitt photo appears in this work as well, directly below three copies of Bill Cosby’s book Fatherhood. The appropriation has a double meaning, as do most of Johnson’s symbolic references: the ultimate act of escape and also the concern for what hope exists for future generations. Johnson’s artistic endeavors, like Beatty’s literature, always address identity, both as an individual and as a race--and how those definitions coincide and conflict for each.

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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 Provenance: Private collection, NY The installation, Antoine's Organ, was recently exhibited at the New Museum: Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (closed 6-6-2021)

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967) Sargent Johnson was best known as a modernist sculptor, influenced by the cultures of Mexico, Latin America, and West Africa. Born in 1887, to a father of Swedish descent and a mother of Cherokee and African American heritage, Johnson and his siblings could have passed for white, but he remained firmly aligned with his African American heritage. In fact, the aim of his art was, according to him, to show African Americans how beautiful they were to themselves. Johnson was orphaned at an early age and sent to live with an uncle, whose wife, May Howard Jackson, happened to be a well-known sculptor of African American portrait busts.

He received his first formal art training at the Worcester Art School in Boston, later relocating to the West Coast in 1915, where he studied at the A.W. Best School of Art and the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. He studied with Ralph Stackpole, as well as Benjamin Bufano, whose work influenced his artistic output greatly in the 1920’s.

At this time, Johnson’s work consisted of small scale ceramic heads, primarily of children. He became a regular exhibitor in the Harmon Foundation exhibitions between 1926 to 1935.

Johnson’s creative output increased dramatically in the 1930’s. He experimented with a variety of material including terra cotta, wood, beaten copper, marble, terrazzo, and porcelain.

He also produced prints and gouache drawings. He was employed by the California WPA, eventually becoming a supervisor, where his work took on a monumental scale. He created public sculptures such as a carved redwood organ screen for the California School of the Blind, and exterior low relief friezes and mosaic decorations for the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Johnson also created sculptures for the Golden Gate International Exposition held in 1939 on Treasure Island.

In 1944 and 1949 he traveled to Mexico using funds from the Abraham Rosenberg Scholarship, where he studied the culture, ceramics, and sculpture of the region. While still incorporating the geometric shapes and motifs of indigenous peoples, his work became increasingly more abstract until his death in 1967.

In 1970, the Oakland Museum organized the first retrospective of his work, and in 1998, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition entitled, Sargent Johnson: African American Modernist. His work may be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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Acrobat, c. 1940s glazed terra cotta 3-1/2 x 6 x 1-3/4 inches signed Provenance: Arthur C. Painter, a friend of the artist, who worked with Johnson in the WPA in San Francisco. Thence by descent to Painter’s granddaughter, Noel LaChance.

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967)

Beaver, c. 1940s terra cotta with dark brown glaze 2-1/4 x 1-1/4 (base) 1-1/2 inches high signed Provenance: Arthur C. Painter, a friend of the artist, who worked with Johnson in the WPA in San Francisco.

Thence by descent to Painter’s granddaughter, Noel LaChance.

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967)

Singing Saints, 1940 lithograph in black on wove paper 12 × 9-1/4 inches (image) 15 -5/16 × 12-1/16 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and numbered 1/15 Provenance: the artist to Arthur C. Painter to his granddaughter. Arthur Painter was a friend and colleague of Johnson’s. He was a writer and art promoter for the W.P.A. in San Francisco. This exact print was featured in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle in March, 1940, and was the first pull of the edition.

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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 1946-1951.

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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Halloween Alley, Chicago, c. 1950 mixed media on board 20 x 16 inches signed

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FREDERICK D. JONES, JR. (1913-1996)

Horse With Rider, c. 1960 enamel on metal 7 x 5 inches initialed

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FREDERICK D. JONES, JR. (1913-1996)

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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 Tate Modern, 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 co-found 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 counter-narrative that was about affirmation of African American heritage. The goal was to change the community’s mindset and positively influence its outlook.

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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If I Lost My Way, 1966 etching 20 x 16 inches (image) full margins signed Barbara Jones, dated, and numbered 1/4 artists label Verso inscribed with artist’s poem The sun went down an hour ago I wonder as I look towards home If I lost my way by light of day How should I find it now night has come?

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CLIFF JOSEPH (1922-2020) Cliff Joseph painted The Bystanders in 1966 during the height of desegregation in public schools in the United States. The painting depicts a young African American mother walking her daughter to school. The girl is tightly clutching her schoolbooks as she is confronted by a white aggressor attempting to block her path. Her mother rests her hand on the girl’s head in an effort to lend comfort and reassurance. Joseph successfully captures the tension of the mother and daughter’s tremendous courage faced with a nightmarish scene. The police officer, whose presence at the scene should have been to offer protection to the student has reversed, as his stance positions himself on the side of the unlawful aggressor and the klansman. There is also a creature reminiscent of the monsters seen in the paintings of Bob Thompson at the feet of the white aggressor. Assumably a dog in real life, it is painted as it might have been seen by the little girl—a black, demonic creature resembling more closely an alligator or dragon.

The real subject, however, is not as much about this standoff as it is about the apathetic faces of the people looking on. The “audience” is comprised of a mixture of black and white people and while the appropriate position on the event taking place is clearly evident—they do nothing. The message Joseph attempts to make is about the crime of inaction. The American flag flown upside down is seen in many of his paintings and represents the antilogic or backwards state of affairs in the country during the 1960s-70s. Sadly, the scenes depicted in Joseph’s works painted during the Civil Rights era can be seen on the front pages of today’s newspapers.

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The Bystanders, 1966 oil on masonite 21-1/2 x 30 inches signed, dated, and titled Exhibited: Afro-American Artists 1800-1969, Division of Art Education of the School District of Philadelphia, in cooperation with the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center, 1969

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COLUMBUS KNOX (1923-1999) Columbus Knox was born in Philadelphia in 1923. He attended Central High School, and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts (now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia). One of his first paintings, Charging Warriors, was listed in Who’s Who in Black Art. Knox worked primarily in acrylics, oil and watercolor.

His use of light within his extraordinary circular, vertical and horizontal line movement gave his figures strength, power and life. Due to Knox’s concentrated use of vibrant colors and masterful brush strokes, figures in his paintings evoked an ethereal sense of the divine.

- Gallery owner and curator, Keith Scriven Knox was commissioned to do paintings for collectors and corporations, including one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for a Philadelphia high school. His other award-winning pieces include Pebbles, Inez’s Communion, Dancing Watusi, and Black Madonna. Knox worked as an art director for the Philadelphia based U.S. Naval Supply Depot, and was a graphic designer and illustrator for other government agencies. In the 1980s, he retired as a visual media specialist for the Federal Office of Mining and Safety.

Knox was a beloved presence at the annual Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show in Philadelphia and was represented in major exhibitions like Afro-American Artists, 1800-1969, Philadelphia School District and the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center; Philadelphia Collects: Works on Paper, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, 2008; and In Search of Missing Masters: The Lewis Tanner Moore Collection of African American Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia.

Photo: Philadelphia Daily News, June 15, 1999, p. 48.

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Sharecropper, c. 1988 watercolor on paper 29 x 19 inches signed

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COLUMBUS KNOX (1923-1999)

Black Cowboy, n.d. watercolor on paper 15 x 21 inches signed

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COLUMBUS KNOX (1923-1999)

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BENI E. KOSH/ CHARLES ELMER HARRIS (1917-1993) Studio B, 1951 oil on canvas board 20 x 16 inches signed and dated Steven Litt, art critic for The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) had this to say about Kosh in an article written in 1995, when the body of his work was discovered: “Harris at his best was a powerful artist with a keen eye and a knack for painting both abstractions and representational imagery. His identity as an African American comes through strongly not only in his choice of neighborhood scenes but in the inspiration he drew from African art and contemporary African American artists including [Jacob] Lawrence.”

Charles Elmer Harris was born in 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Central High School in Cleveland, and then enlisted as a merchant marine. His tour led him to ports in North Africa, where he “discovered” his African heritage. He eventually learned French and converted to Islam.

In the 1960’s, he legally changed his name to Beni E. Kosh or “Son Of Ethiopia”. He was a student of Cleveland artist Paul Travis at the Cleveland Institute of Art and later connected to the “Sho Nuff Art Group”, a group of African-American artists, and the Karamu House artist group. He developed vision problems and stopped painting by 1977.

Kosh scarcely ever exhibited or sold his work. It was not until the end of his life that his works were “rediscovered” and amassed recognition.

Kosh’s work is noted in the catalog Yet Still, We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland 1920 – 1970 and included in exhibitions at the Cleveland State University and the Butler Institute of American Art.(1996)

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BENI E. KOSH/ CHARLES ELMER HARRIS (1917-1993)

Composition 402, 1957 gouache on board 20-3/8 x 15 inches signed and dated in recto

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BENI E. KOSH/ CHARLES ELMER HARRIS (1917-1993)

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OMAR LAMA Omar Lama was born in Halls, Tennessee, and his parents migrated to the Bronzeville community of Chicago in 1945. Omar was interested in drawing at an early age, and received a scholarship from the R.R. Donnelley Printing Company for 2 years of study at the Junior School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1955). He studied commercial art at Dunbar High School in Chicago and studio art at Kennedy-King College and Chicago State University.

Lama specialized in drawing, although he did paintings as well. He was a founding member of Africobra.

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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 threedimensional 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.

In 1939 the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild sponsored an exhibition of his work at

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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)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

B,SGW (Stained Glass Windows), 2000 silk screen print on Rising Two Ply Rag paper through hand-cut film stencils edition of 135, 15 AP, 10 PP, 4 CP, 5 WP 27 1/4 x 20 1/8 inches (image) 32 x 25 inches (sheet) signed, dated, titled and numbered 130/135 printer's chop mark, bottom left Published by Spradling-Ames Corporation, Key West, Florida; printed by Workshop, Inc., Washington, D.C., Lou Stovall, master printer.

Illustrated: Jacob Lawrence, The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, p. 70 (L00-1) This image is based on the painting, Builders--Stained Glass Windows (1998)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

Memorabilia, 1990 lithograph on BFK Rives paper from hand color-separated photo aluminum plates 31-1/4 x 22-7/8 inches (image) 31-1/4 x 22-7/8 inches (sheet) edition of 100 with 10 AP, 5 HC signed, titled, dated, and numbered 29/100 Illustrated: Jacob Lawrence, The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, p. 52, L90-3 Published by University of Washington Press, Seattle; printed at Stone Press Editions Editions, Seattle; Kent Lovelace, master printer.

From Nesbett, p. 52 Originally commissioned in 1989 by Vassar College as a poster for the 20th anniversary of its Africana Study Program. The lithograph was published by University of Washington Press to establish the Jacob Lawrence Endowment. The fund is being used to support a new series of publications entitled the Jacob Lawrence Series on American Artists.

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

Pentecost, 1966; color lithograph 13-3/8 x 18 inches (image) 18-5/8 x 22-5/8 inches (sheet) Published by United Homeland Ministries, Boston.

From Christian Concepts in Art: Seven Original Lithographs.

L65-1 A group of artists including Jacob Lawrence were commissioned to create a series of lithographs illustrating "seven concepts universal to the Christian faith."

Illustrated: Jacob Lawrence, The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, p. 21.

Peter Nesbett states "No numbered or hand-signed copies are known to exist, as of March 2001."

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

Celebration of Heritage, 1992 lithograph on Rives BFK paper from hand color-separated photo aluminum plates from an edition of 150 with 3 PP, 3 HC plates destroyed 30 x 22-1/4 (full sheet) signed, titled, and numbered 14/150 Illustrated: Jacob Lawrence, The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett, p. 54. L92-1 Published jointly by the American Indian Heritage Foundation, Falls Church, VA, and Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle; printed by Stone Press Editions, Seattle; Kent Lovelace, master printer.

Published to support the American Indian Foundation and to coincide with the exhibition Artists for American Indians, at the 1992 World’s Fair Exposition in Seville, Spain.

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

No. 3, For 12 years, John Brown engaged in land speculations and wool merchandising; all this to make some money for his greater work which was the abolishment of slavery, from The Legend of John Brown series, 1977 silk-screen print on Domestic Etching paper through hand cut film stencils edition of 60 with 1 AP, 20 HC screens destroyed 14 x 20 inches (image) 20 x 25-7/8 inches (sheet) signed and dated Published by the Founders Society of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; printed by IvesSillman, New Haven Connecticut.

From Jacob Lawrence, The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett The prints are based on the gouache paintings from the 1941 Life of John Brown series in the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Because of the unstable condition of the original paintings, DIA commissioned Ives-Sillman to transfer the images to screenprints to allow greater accessibility to Lawrence’s narrative.

The prints are the same size as the painted originals. Each painting was originally exhibited with text written by the artist.

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

No. 15, John Brown made many trips to Canada organizing for his assault on Harper’s Ferry, from The Legend of John Brown series, 1977 silk-screen print on Domestic Etching paper through hand cut film stencils edition of 60 with 1 AP, 20 HC screens destroyed 20 x 14 inches (image) 25-7/8 x 20 inches (sheet) signed and dated Published by the Founders Society of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; printed by IvesSillman, New Haven Connecticut.

From Jacob Lawrence, The Complete Prints (1963-2000), Nesbett With the support of northern abolitionists and his own strong religious convictions, John Brown organized a series of successful covert missions to liberate slaves from southern plantations. In the mid-1850’s Brown led antislavery troops in an effort to keep Kansas a free state. Brown was later captured during a raid on Harper’s Ferry and convicted of treason. He was hung in 1859 in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia).

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

No 20, John Brown held Harper’s Ferry for 12 hours. His defeat was a few hours off, from The Legend of John Brown series, 1977 silk-screen print on Domestic Etching paper through hand cut film stencils edition of 60 with 1 AP, 20 HC screens destroyed 14 x 20 inches (image) 20 x 25-7/8 inches (sheet) signed and dated; inscribed No. 20 and numbered 40/60 Published by the Founders Society of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; printed by IvesSillman, New Haven Connecticut.

“The inspiration to paint the Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and John Brown series was motivated by historical events as told to us by the adults of our community...the Black community. The relating of these events, for many of us, was not only very informative but also most exciting to us, the men and women of these stories were strong, daring and heroic; and therefore we could and did relate to these by means of poetry, song, and paint.”

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

Builders, 1995 lithograph on Rives BFK Gray paper from hand color-separated photo aluminum plates 18 x 24 inches (image) signed, dated and titled; numbered 23/100 Published by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; printed by Stone Press Editions, Inc. , Seattle, WA (Kent Lovelace, master printer).

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Jacob LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

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BOB LEE (20th century) Untitled (Men in Bowlers), c. 1980 tempera on board 10 x 6 1/2 inches signed verso artist-painted frame Provenance: private collection, Chicago, IL. Bob Lee worked in the Chicago area.

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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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Nocturne, 1995 lithograph 26 x 36 inches signed and numbered 4/175 Mojo Portfolio blind stamp LL

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HUGHIE LEE-SMITH (1915-1999)

Farmhouse, 1935 watercolor on paper 5 x 7-1/2 inches (image) 10 x 13 inches (sheet) signed and dated June Kelly Gallery label verso

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HUGHIE LEE-SMITH (1915-1999)

Nude, 1958 watercolor and pencil on cream wove paper 16 x 8 inches signed and dated

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SIMONE LEIGH (b. 1967) Born in Chicago to Jamaican missionaries, Leigh studied at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. She moved to New York and got a job creating ceramic tiles at an architectural firm for the city’s subway. In 2010, she took advantage of the artist residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem; that combined with her 2014 project, Free People’s Medical Clinic, a historical inquiry into the United Order of Tents (a secret order formed in 1867 by two formerly enslaved people for Black women nurses), which turned Stuyvesant Mansion in Brooklyn into a functioning medical center, propelled her work into the spotlight.

Best known for her sculptures that include cowrie shells, which Leigh once said served as a “stand-in for the female body, or a body in general, or a representation of an absence as well as a presence."

Leigh’s work has been exhibited at the New Museum (New York), Hammer Museum (LA) and Crystal Bridges. Leigh will be representing the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2022, making her the first black woman to ever do so.

Photo: Simone Leigh poses for a photo at Stratton Sculpture Studios in Philadelphia. (Shaniqwa Jarvis/AP)

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Premye, 2011 color photograph made with archival pigments on fine art rag paper 16 x 20 inches Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered 20/75

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CHARLES LILLY (b. 1949) Charles Lilly was born in 1949 and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1970, with a background in commercial art. For over thirty years he worked as an illustrator. Lilly has painted a variety of people, places, and things, including Malcolm X in 1973, originally painted for Encore, which became the well known cover of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley; Hannibal, painted for Budweiser’s Great Kings of Africa series in 1977; Crispus Attucks, painted in 1999 for Crisis Magazine/ NAACP, and Mt. Freedom, painted for the cover of Dr. Molefi Kete Assante’s book African American History 2002 A Journey of Liberation, the People Publishing Group, NJ. Lilly’s work has been exhibited at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Miami, Dade County Cultural Center Library; Hawaii Public Library; Kennedy Center, Dallas, Texas; DuSable Museum, Chicago; and Hampton University, Virginia. He was commissioned by the Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center, New York in 1994 to paint Langston Hughes, which remains on permanent display at the Library.

Image Credit: Jet, December 22, 1977

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Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins acrylic on illustration board 24 x 29 inches signed

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CHARLES LILLY (b. 1949)

Paul Robeson, Michael Morgan, Awadagin Pratt and Harolyn Blackwell acrylic and airbrush on board 24 x 29 inches

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CHARLES LILLY (b. 1949)

Peabo Bryson acrylic and airbrush on board 23 x 30 inches

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LIONEL LOFTON (b. 1954) Ups and Downs, 2019 acrylic on board 25 1/2 x 10 inches signed, dated, titled Lofton studied with John Biggers at Texas Southern University (Houston) and Clarence Talley at 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; and The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection: Works on Paper, Houston Museum of African American Culture.

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LIONEL LOFTON (b. 1954)

Untitled (Portrait of a Woman and Plant), 1994 ink and watercolor on paper 28 1/2 x 21 inches (image) signed and dated

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LIONEL LOFTON (b. 1954)

Untitled, 2021 acrylic and collage elements on board 16 x 20 inches signed and dated

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EDWARD LOPER, Sr. (1916-2011) Harbor Scene, n.d. watercolor on paper 17 x 21 inches signed Loper was born on the East Side of Wilmington, Delaware, and became interested in art when he was 20 years old. He began working for the Index of American Design of the Works Project Administration (he worked there for 5 years). In 1947, he began offering instructional classes from his studio, and during his career, he taught hundreds of students, including at the Delaware Art Museum, Lincoln University (MO), and the Jewish Community Center.

While mostly self-taught, he did study at the Barnes Foundation off and on for 10 years. He stressed to his own students to paint what they see and not how someone else might see it. In the 1950s, his style fractured the plane of the composition, and his work became more colorful. His work is included in the collections of the Delaware Art Museum, Philadelphia Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery (Wash., D.C.), Howard University, Clark Atlanta University, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, among others. The Delaware Museum presented a retrospective of his work in 1996.

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AL LOVING (1935-2005) Untitled, 1982 watercolor, felt, and torn paper mounted on stretched canvas 48 x 36 inches (canvas) 40 x 32 inches (image approx.) signed, and dated 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 hard-edge 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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WILLIAM MAJORS (1930-1982) Calligraphy, 1975 color lithograph 15 x 22-1/2 inches signed and dated 1975 numbered 35/100; two blind stamps Artist and educator, William Majors' paintings, prints and drawings span over 30 years. A member of the historic Afro American artists' group, Spiral, and extensively exhibiting in New York during the 1960s before moving to teach in California ('69-'71) and subsequently in New England ('71-'82), the artist taught and lectured at over 20 colleges and universities throughout the country (State University of New York; Cornell University; University of Iowa; The Museum of Modern Art Institute; Rhode Island School of Design; University of New Hampshire; California State College, Hayward; Oakland College of Art; University of Connecticut, etc.)

With support of a John Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship (1960-61), and John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1973), Majors lived in Italy, and traveled in Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands.

His work is represented in more than 30 major museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Roy Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY; The Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, NJ; Awarded the Grand Prize in Graphic Arts, First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal (1966), his work has also been exhibited in over 50 national and international exhibitions including the American Federation of Arts; 35th Venice Biennale; The Museum of Modern Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Triennial of Graphics, Grenchen, Switzerland.

For more information on Majors and his work please visit: William Majors

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RICHARD MAYHEW (b. 1924) 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 and 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. Photo: The artist, ca 1979; The Art of Richard Mayhew, Museum of the African Diaspora, 2009.

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Spring Overture, 2002 oil on canvas 48 x 53 inches signed, titled, dated, label verso from ACA Gallery

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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.

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Portrait, 1952 oil on masonite 12-1/2 x 11 inches signed and dated

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CHARLES McGEE (1924-2021)

Cat’s Cradle, c. 1965 charcoal and graphite on paper 40 x 30 inches signed

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CHARLES McGEE (1924-2021)

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LEV T. MILLS (1938-2021) Gemini I, 1969 etching and aquatint on cream wove paper 12x12 inches, full margins signed, titled, and numbered 4/50 in pencil 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.

-Lev T. Mills Photo: Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics, Studio Museum in Harlem, 1980, p. 33.

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LEV T. MILLS (1938-2021)

Gemini II, 1969 etching and aquatint on cream wove paper 12x12 inches, full margins signed, titled, and numbered 4/50 in pencil

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LEV T. MILLS (1938-2021)

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (b.1933 ) Highland Flowers, 1996 serigraph 21 1/4 x 29 inches (full sheet, no margins) signed, dated, titled, and numbered, 15/20 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.

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (b.1933 )

Window, 2010 serigraph 30 x 21 1/2 inches (full sheet, no margins) signed, dated, titled and numbered, 13/24 Provenance: The estate of the artist

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (b.1933 )

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ROGER MURPHY (20th century) Evander Holyfield, c. 1980 gelatin silver print 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches signed

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OTTO NEALS (b. 1931) Young Nanny of the Maroons, 1991 bronze with medium brown patina 16-3/4 x 9 x 9-1/2 inches (sculpture), 6-1/2 x 9 x 2 inches (base) signed, dated, and numbered 2/3 Nanny of the Maroons (c. 1686-1755) led a community of formerly enslaved Africans, called the Windward Maroons, in the British colony of Jamaica. Nanny led a successful guerrilla war against the British, leading to a peace treaty in 1740.

Nanny was purportedly from what is now Ghana, and her success in war tactics was attributed to her powers in Obeah, an African-derived religion widely practiced in the Caribbean countries. Obeah disciples possessed both good and bad magical powers.

The government of Jamaica declared Nanny a National Hero in 1975. Her portrait is featured on the $500 Jamaican dollar bill.

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OTTO NEALS (b. 1931)

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OTTO NEALS (b. 1931)

Head of a Woman, 1995 carved stone 8 3/4 x 13 x 6 1/2 inches signed and dated

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OTTO NEALS (b. 1931)

Neals' mother left her husband and three children in South Carolina in the early 1930s in search of employment in New York City. There was a much greater chance of a woman succeeding at the time because of the numerous domestic jobs available in the city. She did, in fact, become employed, and her family immediately moved to Brooklyn in 1934. Neals attended the Brooklyn High School for Special Trades there and was already very interested in the arts (coincidentally, Ernest Crichlow attended the school at the same time, albeit they were a few years apart).

After high school, Neals got a job in a factory, but two years later, in 1952, he was drafted into the army (he did not go to Korea, but was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC). In the mid1950s, he married Vera Anita, whose relatives were from Guyana. Otto joined a group of Harlem-based artists known as the Twentieth-Century Creators. This group eventually split and the dominant faction started Weusi (a Swahili term for “blackness”). Five of those members then founded the Nyubba Ya Sanna (House of Art), located at 132nd Street in Harlem. Neals had also studied at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop and the Brooklyn Museum’s school.

Neals began participating in the Fulton Art Fair in Bedford-Stuyvesant (1950s-60s), along with artists Ernie Crichlow and Tom Feelings. He made two trips to Guyana, the second in 1970, and when he returned, he became much more invested in sculpture. He found a studio in Brooklyn, and began working with Vivian Schuyler Key, whom after a break in her artistic career to raise a family, returned to work as a painter and sculptor. The two influenced each other’s work.

REF: Black New York Artists of the 20th Century Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections, NYPL, 1998 Black Artists of the New Generation, Elton Fax, 1977. (Photo credit: Leroy Ruffin)

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OTTO NEALS (b. 1931)

Torso, 1992 bronze with blue/green and brown patina on a wooden base 23 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 9 inches (bronze) 1 x 7 x 18 inches (base only) signed and dated, Neals 92

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OTTO NEALS (b. 1931)

Mother of Pearl, 2000, colored etching 9-3/4 x 5-3/4 inches (image), full margins signed, titled, dated, and numbered 7/35

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WILLIAM PAJAUD (1925-2015) William Pajaud was born in New Orleans and lived there until he finished the ninth grade.

Even though he was young, his experiences in that city shaped his subject matter as a painter later in his life. Pajaud moved with his mother to Chattanooga for a year, and there he experienced a racially motivated beating. A year later, his mother landed a teaching job at Texas College, so they moved, once again, to Tyler, TX. Just a teenager, he was subjected to another racially motivated act of violence. Later he commented that his art was a reaction to how a person copes with these kinds of challenges experienced throughout his life.

Pajaud earned a BFA from Xavier University in New Orleans. Eventually he moved to Los Angeles in 1948, and enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute. He exhibited in the 1950s-60s, he exhibited at Heritage Gallery, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Esther Robles Gallery.

He also participated in a co-op group known as Eleven Associated. The artists, including Beulah Woodard, Alice Gafford, and Curtis Tann who rented a space on South Hill Street in an attempt to gain more visibility for their work. The group, while historically significant, did not last long.

Pajaud was appointed as an art director for Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1957, the largest African American-owned business in Los Angeles. Golden State was known for supporting African American artists, and Pajaud also convinced them to build an impressive collection of African American art.

Pajaud exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Pasadena Art Museum; deYoung Art Museum, San Francisco; Atlanta University; University of Iowa.

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Untitled, 1991 felt tip pen drawing 24 x 19 inches (sheet) signed and dated

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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961) Head of a Man, c. 1950 carved wood sculpture 12 x 6 x 6 inches (not including base) initialed on bottom

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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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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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984) George Washington Carver at the Easel silver gelatin print 10 x 8 inches signed 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 19331938 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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CARL POPE (b. 1963) 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 official-looking 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.

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CARL POPE (b. 1963)

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.

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CARL POPE (b. 1963)

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JAMES AMOS PORTER (1905-1970) As the first scholar to provide a thorough and critical analysis of the contributions of AfricanAmericans to art, James A. Porter was the father of African-American art history.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1905, Porter attended Howard University on an art scholarship.

Here he pursued painting, drawing, and art history under the tutelage of the head of the Art Department, James Herring. After graduation, he accepted a position at the university teaching painting and drawing. He remained at Howard University for over 40 years as an instructor, and also as head of the art department and director of the art gallery, where he organized many exhibitions of art by artists of both races and was responsible for enlarging the permanent art collection of Howard University.

Between 1927 and 1928, Porter continued his education at the Teachers College, Columbia University, New York and in 1929 studied at the Art Students League of New York under Dimitri Romanovsky and George Bridgman. He was the recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Harmon Foundation in 1929. He was awarded the Schomburg Portrait Prize in 1933 for the painting, Woman Holding A Jug. In the summer of 1935, Porter studied Medieval Archaeology at the Sorbonne in Paris on a scholarship provided by the Carnegie Foundation. In the fall of that same year he traveled to Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Germany to study European painting and African art. Upon his return, he pursued a Master of Arts in art history at New York University, which he received in 1937. Porter’s thesis would later become the foundation for his book, Modern Negro Art, widely considered the most comprehensive source on the contribution of AfricanAmerican artists in the U.S. from the 18th century to the present. In addition to this book he also published numerous articles including, The Negro Artist and Racial Bias for Art Front in 1936, Robert S. Duncanson, Midwestern Romantic Realist in 1951, and Ten African American Artists of the 19th Century. He contributed to Art in America, Art Quarterly and Encyclopedia of the Arts.

With financial assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, he traveled to Cuba and Haiti in 1945 through 1946 with the purpose of visiting museums and interviewing cultural affairs officers and artists. The information gathered from these sources on the native and independent arts of those countries became an important part of courses taught at Howard University on Latin American art.

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Lagos, Nigeria, 1964 oil on canvas 12 x 20 inches signed and dated Provenance: Private collection, Chicago, IL In 1963-1964, he took another sabbatical leave to travel in Africa, specifically West Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt.

He spent the year painting, collecting various pieces of African art, and gathering materials for a projected book on West African art and architecture. On August 13, 1964, he traveled to Brazil on a grant from Howard University, in search of documentation of the African influence and contribution to Brazilian colonial and modern art and Latin American art and culture. Much of the information and materials he obtained was used in his course African Art and Architecture at Howard University. When he returned to the United States, Porter had accumulated 800 photographs, copious notes and source materials for a book on this subject.

Upon his death in 1970, the James A. Porter Gallery of African-American Art was dedicated at the Howard University Gallery of Art. In 1992, this gallery mounted an exhibition of Porter’s work entitled, James A. Porter, Artist and Art Historian: the Memory of his Legacy.

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MAVIS PUSEY (1928-2019) Broken Construction at Twilight, c. 1977 lithograph 24 x 19 inches (full margins) signed, titled, and numbered 4/20 Mavis Pusey was best known for her hard-edge, 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.

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MAVIS PUSEY (1928-2019)

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 Provenance: Private collection, Virginia.

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MAVIS PUSEY (1928-2019)

Broken Construction at Dusk, c. 1977 lithograph 24 x 18-3/4 inches (full margins) signed, titled, and numbered 4/20

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Mobile Images, c. 1970 etching and aquatint on wove paper 19-3/4 x 15-1/2 inches (full margins) signed and titled AP

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JOHN ROZELLE (b. 1944) Incubus, 1998 acrylic on canvas (stretched over a wood structure) 32 1/4 x 47 1/2 inches; irregularly-shaped signed, titled, and dated verso 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 is currently a tenured Associate Professor in the Drawing and Painting Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 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, 19701990, 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

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CHARLES SALLEE (1913-2006) Untitled (Nude), 1975 charcoal drawing on paper 22 x 16-1/2 inches signed and dated Painter and graphic artist Charles Sallee was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1913. He studied at Western Reserve University, John Huntington Polytechnic Institute, and the Cleveland Museum School of Art. He was the first African American to be admitted to the Cleveland Museum School of Art in 1934. Sallee taught at the Karamu House in Cleveland as well as Kennard Junior High School.

His works have been exhibited at Howard University,1937; International Watercolor Show; Annual May Show, Cleveland, 1937-39; American Negro Exposition, 1940; Atlanta University, 1942; and the South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, IL, 1941.

In 2011, his work was featured in the exhibition, Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop held at Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. His work is found in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The artist at Karamu House, 1930’s, Western Reserve Historical Society, Yet We Still Rise: African American Art in Cleveland 1920-1970, 25.

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WALTER SANFORD (1912-1987) Figural Abstract, c. 1958 mixed media on board 20 x 16 inches signed and dated 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.

Later in his career, he established a studio in Chicago where he began working on a series of portraits of real and imaginary figures 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.

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AUGUSTA SAVAGE (1892-1962) Augusta Savage was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida. She had a knack for sculpting even as a small child, making mud ducks and selling them at the local fair. She married at the age of 15, but her husband died the following year, after having a child together.

In 1915, her family moved to West Palm Beach, where she met a potter and acquired 25 pounds of clay. Her sculpture received much local attention, and through a series of events and support of teachers, Savage traveled to New York City in her quest to become a professional sculptor. She was admitted to the Cooper Union School, which was tuition-free, and finished her 4 year program in 3 years. She traveled abroad to France on scholarship and joined a group of black artists and intellectuals, including Hale Woodruff, Henry Tanner, and Countee Cullen.

By the early 1930s, Savage was living in Harlem and had created a school, Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts. In 1933, she founded The Vanguard, a group of Harlem intellectuals who met in her studio to discuss politics, art, and the condition of the African American.

A short film showing Savage at work: Augusta Savage African American Sculptor.

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Gamin, c. 1929 plaster with painted bronze patina 9 inches (h) incised signature and title

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WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT (1884-1964) Bathers, c. 1925 Oil on masonite 30 x 25 inches Signed 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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CHARLES SEARLES (1937-2004) Born in Philadelphia in 1937, artist and educator Charles Searles held a career-long 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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Dance in the Blue Sky II, 1982 color lithograph 21 x 29 inches (image) signed, titled, and numbered, 13/22

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CHARLES SEBREE (1914-1985) Looking Back, c. 1948 oil on masonite 14 x 11 inches signed and dated 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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CHARLES SEBREE (1914-1985)

The Whistler, c. 1950 oil on masonite 11 x 9 inches signed

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CHARLES SEBREE (1914-1985)

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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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Seaholm, 1956 oil on canvas board 13-3/4 x 23-3/4 inches signed and dated inscribed verso, Seaholm, Designed by John Trumpy & Sons, Annapolis, MD (1950?), A.V. du Pont, Owner, captain Edward S. Baltier, master mariner, Also designed “Sequoia” Presidential Yacht, 1925-76.

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THOM SHAW (1947-2010) Cincinnati based artist Thom Shaw was known for his large scale woodcuts and drawings depicting marginalized Black communities and the effects of systemic racism. He did not dilute his work, nor did he compromise, and because of that, created iconic imagery that was true to his vision.

Shaw attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati and earned an MFA in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI. He worked as Cincinnati Bell’s lead graphic designer until he left the corporate world in 1995 and began to pursue art full time. Full time work never hindered Shaw’s pursuit of attaining recognition in the art world. He worked tirelessly honing his craft and representing it personally. In the late 1960s and 70’s, Shaw was painting abstracts. Miller Gallery, Cincinnati, gave Shaw his first solo show in 1973. He continued to show his work in Washington DC, Detroit, and Chicago.

Shaw had turned to printmaking and drawing when in 1994 he was invited to be a part of Curator’s Choice: The Hale Woodruff Memorial Exhibition, held at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He exhibited a series of woodcuts, prints, and drawings from a series he called The Malcolm X Paradox. This series of works portrayed the co-opting of the “X” as a symbol of Black Power by young African American males.

Through them Shaw had carved a gang icon which represented the many ills of society, the broken down family, the loneliness of youth, the addiction to drugs as an escape, the resort to violence to prove oneself. His images were very graphic, showing killings, prostitution, drug dependence… Many, especially in the AfricanAmerican community, criticized them as being derogatory to the black man, as confirming the mediatic notion that the latter was a menace to society. Shaw, however, disagreed: “My images specifically depict the negative effects society imparts on African American males with whom I identify,” he once told me; “I wanted to show the black man as a victim, a target of the many societal ills; I wanted to raise awareness about his condition.

Saad Ghosn, AEQAI In 1996, the Cleveland Art Museum exhibited 20 woodcuts of the entire series - ten remain in their collection. Shaw was the first local Black artist to have a show at the museum.

Thom Shaw continued to create woodcuts and large scale drawings, persevering through multiple health crises near the end of his life. He died in 2010.

REF: Wilson, Kathy Y., Thom Shaw: Dead Man Working, Cincinnati Magazine, March 1, 2009.

Saad Ghosn, AEQAI

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Malcolm X Paradox: Urban Medals, 1999 acrylic on canvas 39 x 32 inches signed and dated Provenance: The estate of the artist to private collection, Cincinnati, OH

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THOM SHAW (1947-2010)

Community of Zombies, c. 2000 woodcut on paper 48 x 44 inches.

Provenance: The estate of the artist to private collection, Cincinnati, OH.

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THOM SHAW (1947-2010)

Untitled, c. 2000 acrylic on canvas 81 1/4 x 64 1/2 inches signed on stretcher verso Provenance: The estate of the artist to private collection, Cincinnati, OH

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THOMAS SILLS (1914-2000) Blue Jay, 1971 enamel on board 15-1/2 x 12 inches signed, titled, and dated 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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DANNY SIMMONS (b. 1953) Hocus Pocus, 2017 oil painting and collage on canvas 48 x 36 inches signed, titled, and dated Simmons’ father worked as a professor of black history at Pace University in New York, and his mother was a painter when he grew up in Queens, so his early artistic interest was encouraged, yet he chose to study business, earning his BA from New York University and an MBA from Long Island University. He worked in city government and real estate in the 1980s until the market crashed in the early 1990s, when he decided to step back and pursue his first interest —art. Self-taught, he draws inspiration from the work of modernists, Picasso, Klee, Miro, and Wilfredo Lam. Simmons discusses the symbolism of his trademark “dots” in an article found in International Review of African American Art, Vol 17, No. 2, p. 34: I am drawn to dots and dashes. For me, they are fundamental structures like DNA that are the building blocks of so much. What I try to do with my paintings is to create abstractions that relate to our African heritages without interpreting them. It took me a long time to figure it out, but I found my conduit with dots. Dotting allows me to be abstract and still express my “Africanness”. From the oldest aboriginal cultures, dots have always represented spirituality and the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Through dotting, I was able to bridge the distance between Africa and the U.S. Simmons developed Corridor Gallery to showcase emerging artists and Rush Arts Gallery for mature, mid-career artists—such as Ed Clark, Frank Bowling, Wadsworth Jarrell, Adger Cowans, and Herb Gentry. His work with the Rush Arts Gallery has financed and provided opportunities for black artists at every level .

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DANNY SIMMONS (b. 1953)

Untitled, c. 2015 acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches Provenance: The artist to private collection, Philadelphia, PA

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DANNY SIMMONS (b. 1953)

Shaman Work, c. 2015 oil, fabric collage/watercolor/airbrush on rag paper mounted to board (original) 30 1/2 x 44 inches identified on label verso with original price of $7,000 Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Philadelphia, PA

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MERTON SIMPSON (1928-2013) Untitled (Abstract), c. 1960 acrylic on canvas 40 x 36 inches signed MD Simpson 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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DAMBALLAH DOLPHUS SMITH (1943-1992) Self Portrait, 1961 conté crayon on paper 14 x 9 inches, identified by exhibition label verso, 1961, Scholastic Art Awards “Hopefully my art, whether painting, drawing, or textile, will transport the viewer back in time to gather sensory awareness of the rich and great culture of my people. It should further yield an alliance with our ancient past and an assurance of our infinite future.”

The artist, quoted in Black Artists on Art, Volume 1, Lewis/Waddy, revised ed., p. 101.

Smith had remarkable skill as an artist at a very young age. He studied at the Art Students League, New York and the Philadelphia College of Art. He had solo exhibitions of his work at Hinkley-Brohel Gallery, Peggy Fingerate Goldstein Gallery, and Blackman’s Art Gallery. His work was included in Afro-American Artists, 1800-1969, a very important exhibition held at the Philadelphia Civic Center in 1969.

In 1992, Smith designed a poster for the American Red Cross for their HIV/AIDS program.

The image depicted a male figure hugging a smaller image of himself, and was accompanied by an Ethiopian proverb: "He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured”. Smith died of complications due to AIDS the same year.

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DAMBALLAH DOLPHUS SMITH (1943-1992)

Griot’s Song, 1978 lithograph on wove paper 25-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 23/50

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DAMBALLAH DOLPHUS SMITH (1943-1992)

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SUE JANE MITCHELL SMOCK (b. 1937) Warrior, n.d. bronze on a natural wood base 19 inches high (bronze) 9 x 7 x 4-1/2 (base) Smock worked in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was known for her woodcuts and sculpture.

She exhibited at the James A. Porter Gallery of African American Art at Howard University in 1970. She received her BA from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, and her MFA from Columbia University in New York. Her work is included in the collections of the California African American Museum (The Personal Treasures of Bernard & Shirley Kinsey), the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and were collected privately by Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sidney Poitier, and Lady Eudora Ebiam. She was elected Chairperson of the Art department at Lincoln University. She lived in London in the 1970s. Her prints hung alongside works by Picasso and Giacometti at the Cultural Center of the University of Geneva.

The majority of Smock’s work is influenced by her study of African culture during her first marriage to an anthropologist sent to Nigeria by the Ford Foundation. She then married Lon Satton, an actor and singer.

REF: In the Hands of African American Collectors: The Personal Treasures of Bernard & Shirley Kinsey, Afro-American Artists, A Bio-Bibliographical Directory, Cedarholm, and International Library of Afro-American Life and History, Lindsay Patterson (1978).

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RENEE STOUT (b. 1958) What the Oracle Said, 2020 archival pigment print 14 x 11 inches (image) 19 x 13 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered10/18 “It boggles my mind that during the worst pandemic this generation has ever seen, that people are having a hard time sheltering and taking this time to process and reassess their priorities, because our society has been moving at a pace that doesn’t leave much room for reflection and introspection. We live in a culture where we have been trained to constantly live outwardly and to want whatever we want, whenever we want it and fast. Time in quarantine has allowed me to ponder things spiritually and philosophically and I’ve come to the conclusion that the universe may be trying to send the world the message that it’s time for everyone to take some time to slow down and be still.”

-Renée Stout, August 2020

Stout grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1984 and after a brief stint in Boston, moved to Washington, D.C. In D.C., she began a series of fetishes, objects in which mysterious powers are thought to reside. She used found objects and created an art of relics to create sophisticated assemblages (and prints following a similar theme). Sylvia Moore writes in the book, Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, MidMarch Press, NY, 1995: Spiritual influences and inspirations for Stout’s art are diverse. “I am attracted to spiritual societies”, says Stout, “I am obsessed about knowing about my own past—which is a mystery to me.” She reaches out to Candombie devotional objects of Brazil, to Haitian Vodun and its American Voodoo adaptations, to Native American spiritualism and folk medicine, and especially, to Central African arts and cultures.

Photo: The artist’s photo; National Museum of Women in the Arts website (https://nmwa.org/art/artists/renee-stout/)

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FREDDIE STYLES (b. 1944) LDS Series #6, 2020 acrylic on gessoed paper 19 3/4 x 25 1/2 inches signed 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, and the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; Tradition Redefined, The Brenda and Larry Thompson Collection; 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 (ATL), MOCA/GA (ATL), Spelman College Museum of Art, Clark Atlanta University Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, Paul Jones Collection (University of Delaware), University of Alabama, Absolut Vodka, Sweden.

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FREDDIE STYLES (b. 1944)

Summer Rainbow Revisited, 2020 acrylic on gessoed paper 19 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches signed

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FREDDIE STYLES (b. 1944)

Study in Black, White, and Silver, 2018 mixed media on gessoed Lenox 100 rag paper 29 1/2 x 22 inches signed and dated The artist has stated he incorporated the use of thermal fax paper in the process of creating this series of works.

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ANN TANKSLEY (b. 1934) Shot Down By the Bureaucratic Rhetoric, 1974 oil on canvas 46 x 50 inches signed, titled, and dated Artist’s label verso Born Ann Graves in the Homewood community of Pittsburgh, Ann became interested in art at an early age. She graduated from South Hills High School in 1952 and went on to study at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and earn a BFA. She married fellow Homewood native, John Tanksley and they moved to Brooklyn, NY. Tanksley began raising her family before returning to study at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research (Greenwich Village), and also at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop.

Tanksley was an early member of Where We At: Black Women Artists, Inc., a women’s art collective based in New York. She exhibited at the 1972 show, Cookin' and Smokin', at the Weusi-Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery in Harlem.

“She uses a glazing technique incorporated with charcoal lines, which enhances a sense of spontaneity and humor.”

Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists , KingHammond, 1995 Her work is included in the collections of the Johnson Publishing Company (dispersed), Studio Museum in Harlem, National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Hewitt Collection, among others.

Tanksley grew up in Pittsburgh and earned her BFA at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1956); she also attended the Art Students’ League, Parsons School of Design and Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop (all in NYC).

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ANN TANKSLEY (b. 1934)

Portrait of Eunita, 1976 oil on canvas 28 x 19-1/2 inches signed and dated; artist’s address verso

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ANN TANKSLEY (b. 1934)

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TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE POTTERY Ceramic vase with incised decoration, c. 1950s cream color background with olive green decoration 10 1/4 inches signed, Tuskegee Institute Pottery A similar example was sold in July 2020, lot 3.

Illustrated: Alternative American Ceramics, 1870-1955, Ken Forster, pp. 191-192. A copy of this book including the illustration of this vase accompanies the lot.

This is an important example of African American ceramics, and illustrates the “totally new concept in the field of African American higher education."

In the 1930s, George Washington Carver, who was the Director of the Tuskegee Institute, recruited Isaac Scott Hathaway to develop a department of ceramics at the school. Hathaway taught at the School of Mechanical Industries and the School of Architecture. As a scientist, Carver was interested in the extraction of pigments from the Alabama red clay, and he and Hathaway worked closely together in the formulation of glazes for ceramic and pottery production. In the late 1940s, Hathaway moved on to the Alabama State College in Montgomery, and the ceramics program was taken over by William Daniel Southall (1952-1957). From 1953-1956, Donell Carter, prior to graduating from the Institute with a degree in engineering technology, was responsible for pottery casting and firing. In the 1950s, better, larger kilns were acquired and interest in the craft increased.

Booker T. Washington opened Tuskegee in 1881, under his belief that “vocational and instructional skills could produce economic gains, which, in turn, would be instrumental in the struggle to achieve political and civil rights.” (Forster, p. 191)

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JOHN L. WADE (1937-2013) H vs. V, 1980 color lithograph 30 x 22 inches (image) signed, titled and numbered, 18/25 John Wade studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University (MFA, 1968). After graduating, he was hired as the first African American instructor in the art department at Temple University. He taught there for 42 years, retiring in 2009.

He exhibited at the Philadelphia Civic Center, Temple University, Philadelphia Festival of the Arts, and other venues.

Wade helped in the formation of the Brandywine Workshop, and served as their president.

He brought in other major artists to the organization, such as Bearden, Van Der Zee, and Paul Keene. He won the Silvermine Award, Woodmere Endowment Fund Award, and the M. Grumbacher cash award. His work is featured in many important collections, including the National Academy of Design, William Penn Memorial Museum, Moravian College, Delaware King Memorial Foundation, Schomberg Center, and the Afro-American Museum, California.

His work is currently included in an exhibition at the Delaware Museum, titled, Afro-American Images 1971: The Vision of Percy Ricks. Wade exhibited at the original show in 1971 at the State Armory in Wilmington, Delaware.

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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.

Photo: Ari Marcopoulos/www.theguardian.com

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Untitled (John Brown), 1997 etching and aquatint on Mulberry chine collé on Rives BFK paper 11-3/4 x 9 inches, full margins initialed, dated and numbered 31/35 in pencil, lower margin Printed and published by Landfall Press, Chicago, with the ink stamp verso

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TIMOTHY WASHINGTON (b. 1946) Untitled, 2013 pastel and brass ring on foam core 19-1/2 x 15 inches signed and inscribed December 6, year 2013, time 3:50 PM in pen “I am dealing with message art: it is informative and relates to a poster in that it gives information. However, I want the information to be discovered; therefore the message is subtle. I try to ask questions and make the viewer think and in turn look closer.”

Excerpt from Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, Timothy Washington, LA County Museum of Art, 1971.

Washington was born in Los Angeles and studied art at the Chouinard Art School (now Cal Arts; BFA, 1969). Washington, along with his contemporaries, David Hammons, Betye Saar, Noah Purifoy, John Outterbridge, and Dan Concholar, favored assemblage using found materials to express social black consciousness. He exhibited at Brockman and Gallery 32 in Los Angeles.

Washington’s work was featured in these important exhibitions: Soul of a Nation, Art in the Age of Black Power, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, and 19 Sixties, A Cultural Awakening Re-evaluated, 1965-1975.

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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.

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.

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.

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 Chicago in 2018. This exhibition traveled to the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019.

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Portrait of a Man in a Green Jacket, 1934 Watercolor on cream wove paper 7.25 x 9.5 inches Retains Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles label verso.

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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)

Child + Woman, 1950 linocut on thin paper 21-3/4 x 17 inches (sheet) signed and dated initialed in the plate CW

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CHARLES WHITE (1918-1979)

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WALTER WILLIAMS (19201998) The Fence, n.d. watercolor and ink on paper 10 x 8 3/4 inches signed; dedicated on verso “To Sam Middleton, a Friend” Painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Walter Williams studied art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School under Ben Shahn, Reuben Tam, and Gregoria Prestopino. He also spent a summer studying art at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1955, Williams won a Whitney Fellowship that permitted him to work and travel in Mexico. He also won a National Arts and Letters Grant in 1960 and the Silvermine Award in 1963.

Williams moved to Copenhagen, Denmark in the 1960’s to escape the discrimination of the United States, While he was in Copenhagen, he created a series of colorful woodcuts of black children playing in fields of flowers. He returned to the United States to serve as artist-in-residence at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Here, he completed a body of work informed by the experiences of being an African American living in the South. Walter H. Williams died in Copenhagen in June1988.

Williams’ work has been featured in major exhibitions including, An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1983; Unbroken Circle: Exhibition of African American Artists of the 1930s and 1940s, Kenkeleba House, NY, 1986; Black Motion, SCLC Black Expo 72, Los Angeles, CA; Two Centuries of Black American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1972; and 10 American Negro Artists Living and Working in Europe: paintings, prints, drawings, and collages, Den Frie, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1964.

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JOHN WILSON (1922-2015) Mother and Child, 1952 lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 21-5/8 x 18-7/8 inches signed, dated, and numbered 49/50 printed at Taller de Gráfica Popular (Mexican, founded 1937) by José Sánchez After studying in his native Boston and in Paris with Fernand Léger, John Wilson worked in Mexico from 1950 to 1956, drawn, like many progressive African American artists, to the expressive power of Mexican modern art and its frank political engagement. Mother and Child, which Wilson made while a guest artist at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, relates to a 1952 mural he executed in Mexico, The Incident. Now destroyed, the mural portrayed the gruesome lynching of an African American witnessed by a family. In the print, Wilson retained the monumental scale and sculptural forms of the mural but translated the specific fear of lynching expressed by the figures into a more generalized but equally affecting image of sorrow and protective anxiety. In Mexico Wilson found the freedom, as well as the distance, to explore the oppression and trauma of the African American experience. from the Art Institute of Chicago website Wilson was a Boston painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was influenced by the Mexican muralists, in terms of both style and subject matter, and addressed issues of racism and oppression of African American people in his art. He grew up in Roxbury and took art classes at Roxbury Memorial High School before continuing his education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston). He also studied in Paris with Fernand Leger. Upon his return to the U.S., he married Julie Kowitch, a teacher, and traveled to Mexico. He later taught at Pratt University in New York, and Boston University.

Wilson’s bronze sculpture of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is on permanent display at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington , D.C.

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JOSEPH YOAKUM (1886-1972) According to Yoakum, he was born on a Navajo reservation in Window Rock, Arizona, so it’s possible he is actually Native American, but he identified as black and referred to himself as "an old black man". He grew up in Walnut Grove, Missouri, and at some point, ran away to join the circus. He was also purportedly in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He joined the Navy and served during WWI. His whereabouts were unknown from the end of the war until 1962, but he was an itinerant, traveling everywhere; he also got married and had five children.

Yoachum was living in a small storefront on the Southside of Chicago in 1967, when a neighbor—an anthropologist and professor at Chicago State University —knocked on his door to inquire about the drawings Yoachum had pasted in the windows. Yoachum had been relatively holed up in his space for the past five years, making drawings of all of his past travels. The professor showed the work to his pastor, who showed the work to another pastor, and eventually the work was shown to a few of the successful “mainstream” artists in Chicago, most notably, Jim Nutt and Karl Wirsum. Yoakum’s work and reputation spread hand-to-hand and mouth-to-mouth.

A retrospective exhibition of his work, Joseph E. Yoachum: What I Saw is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, having traveled from the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Big Smoky Mtns Between Chattanooga Tennessee and Birmingham Alabama, n.d. colored pencil and ink on cream paper 11-1/2 x 17 inches signed and inscribed, Big Smoky Mtns Between Chattanooga Tennessee and Birmingham Alabama by Joseph E. Yoakum

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CHARLES YOUNG (1930-2005) “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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Big Jones, c. 1975-1980 oil on canvas 44 x 36 inches signed; titled and revised date verso

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KENNETH YOUNG (1933-2017) Kenneth Young was born in Louisville, KY in 1933. He initially studied physics 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 Afro-American 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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Untitled, 1978 acrylic on canvas 38 x 44 inches Gallery K, Washington DC label verso Provenance: Studio of the Artist; Gallery K, Washington DC; Private Collection, Washington DC; Connor Smith, Washington DC; Private Collection, NY Exhibitions: Kenneth Victor Young: Continuum, American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center, Washington DC, 2019

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