Marion Perkins 1908-1961: South Side Sculptor

Marion Perkins (1908-6) www.BLACKARTAUCTION.com

South Side Sculptor

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MARION PERKINS (1908-1961) Lot 41 • Head of a Boy, c. 1950 carved stone 7-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches (sculpture only), initialed MP on a contemporary painted wooden base (2-1/4 x 6-1/4 x 6-1/4 inches) Provenance: Private collection, Chicago, IL $30,000-50,000

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Chicago Sunday Tribune, Chicago, IL, 24 Aug 1947, Relax is Word of Action for Artist Perkins, Sculpturer Wins Praise and Pay With Hobby, Janet Peck.

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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

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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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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 the 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.f REF: Schulman, Daniel. “Marion Perkins: A Chicago Sculptor Rediscovered.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 1999, p. 220-243+267-271

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Marion and Eva Perkins outside of their home, Chicago, 1951

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EXHIBITIONS 1940

Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro (1851-1940), Tanner Art Galleries, Chicago, IL

1941

Exhibition of Negro Artists of Chicago; Howard University, Washington DC 53rd Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, John Henry

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Exhibition of Works by Chicago Negro Artists; Parkway Center and South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, IL

1944

48th Annual Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1947

51st Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1948

52nd Annual Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1949

53rd Annual Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, IL Contemporary Sculpture: 16 Americans; Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, VA

1951

55th Annual Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago

1953

Contemporary Sculpture by Chicago Artists, with Preliminary Sketches and Drawings; Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL

1954

16 Chicago Sculptors; 1020 Art Center, Chicago, IL

1957

American Exhibition; Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1958

1958 Chicago Artists Exhibition; Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1961

New Vistas in American Art; Howard University, Washington DC

1976

Two Centuries of Black American Art; Los Angles Museum of Art, CA

1978

WPA and the Black Artist: Chicago and New York; Chicago Public Library, IL

1979

Chicago Public Library, IL (solo)

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Jet, June 12, 1952: 52.

Jet, August 28, 1958

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Fern Gayden, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Burroughs, seated. Marion Perkins, Vernon Jarrett, and Robert Lucas, standing; Ebony, March 1973.

Chicago Tribune, Chicago, IL , 24 Jun 1951

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EXHIBITIONS 1979

Black Artists/South; Huntsville Museum of Art, AL

1982

Margaret Burroughs, Marion Perkins: A Retrospective; Evans-Tibbs Collection, Washington D.C.

1985

Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800-1950; Bellevue Art Museum, WA

1990

Two Black Artists of the FDR Era: Marion Perkins, Frederick D. Jones; DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL

1993

The Flowering: African-American Artists and Friends in 1940s Chicago: A Look at the South Side Community Art Center; Illinois State Museum, IL

2000

The Great Migration: The Evolution of African American Art, 1790-1945; Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH

2003

A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art Institute of Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago, IL

2007

Chisel + Stone; DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL

2008

Convergence: Jewish and African American artists in Depression Era Chicago; Koehnline Museum of Art, Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, IL

2009

To See Reality in a New Light: The Art and Activism of Marion Perkins; Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Chicago, IL (solo)

2012

Buried Treasures: Art in African American Museums; DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL Pose/Re-pose: Figurative Works, Then and Now; Savannah College of Art & Design, GA

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