Visions of Africa

Visions of AFRICA

Visions of AFRICA

William Anderson (1932-2019)

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 during the Great Depression. Though best known for documenting the African American experience in the South, Anderson began his career as a sculptor. He studied sculpture at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico and received his M.F.A. in 1968. Disappointed with the way that other people photographed his sculptures, Anderson began taking pictures of his own artwork. This decision marked the beginning of a significant transition in his career from a little known sculptor to a critically acclaimed photographer.

His photography has won national awards and is included in such prestigious collections as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Anderson was a professor at Morehouse University for many years and served as chair of the art department. He retired in 2007 to pursue his art full time.

Untitled (Africa), c. 1975 silver print

18-1/2 x 13-1/4 inches (image) signed in pencil verso

William Anderson Jr.: An Underappreciated Artist

signed in pencil on verso

stamped on verso: Morehouse College Artist Photographer, Professor

Untitled (Africa), c. 1975 silver print

15-1/2 x 11 inches (image)

Sorcerer’s Village, 1972 color screenprint 16 3/8 x 19 3/4 inches, full margins. signed, titled and numbered 118/125

Printed by NYIT Print Workshop, New York, with the blind stamp lower right. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#32.

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.

Romare Bearden (1911-1988)

Roots, 1977 color lithograph

24 x 18 inches (full margins)

unsigned (many of these are unsigned)

Edition of 150

GG #60

Bearden created the image for the national broadcast of the mini-series based on Alex Haley’s book (1976), Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Walter Annenburg, the owner of T.V. Guide, owned the original collage by Bearden and it hung in his home.

Slice of Cotton, 1995; oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and dated

John Anansa Thomas 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.

John Anansa Thomas Biggers (1924-2001)

Family Ark, 1992

color offset lithograph on cream wove paper

29-1/2 x 21-1/2 inches

signed and dated on verso in pencil by the artist; this example is a printer’s proof; signed also by the master colorist at the Brandywine Workshop

Printed and published by The Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia.

Wash Day, 1969

conté crayon and graphite on paper

41 1/4 x 29 3/4 inches (full sheet)

signed and dated

Willie Cole (b. 1955)

The Ogun Sisters, 2012 serigraph and solar plate on BFK Rives

paper

30 x 22 inches

signed, titled, dated and numbered, 22/55

Published by Raven Fine Art Editions; Curlee Raven Holton, master printer.

Willie Cole was born in New Jersey in 1955. He studied at the The School of Visual Arts, New York and the Art Students League. His work combines visual references of African and African American imagery with Dada-type “readymades”, such as irons, hair dryers, matches and lawn jockeys.

His work has been exhibited at the Montclair Art Museum (2006), University of Wyoming Art Museum (2006), the Tampa Museum of Art (2004), Miami Art Museum (2001), Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998).

Cole’s, The Ogun Sisters, addresses domestic roles associated with black women: the composition is a mirror image, insinuating repetition and, along with the faces of the figure(s) being obscured by a mask, loss of identity.

Ibou (Ibrahima) Diouf (1941-2017)

Ibou Diouf is a distinguished artist who has received much recognition in his own lifetime. Since graduating from the National Beaux Arts Institute of Senegal he has gone on to exhibit internationally. In 1999 he received the Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Lion - the highest honorary award in Senegal.

1st World Festival of Negro Arts, 1966 offset lithograph (poster) created for the 1966 Festival in Dakar 24 x 17-3/4 inches signed in the image

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 post-graduate 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 works 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 19652002, 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. 29May 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

African Women/Windows, 2004

Color woodblock print and monotype

18-3/4 x 24-1/2 inches (image)

22-1/2 x 30 inches (sheet)

signed, titled, dated, with A/P

David Driskell (1931-2020)

African Sentinel, 1971 gouache and collage on board 26-1/2 x 20-1/8 inches signed and dated artist's label verso

Provenance: the artist to Earl Hooks, thence by descent. 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).

This is a remarkable image; an early and important work, influenced by Romare Bearden in approach, but iconically Driskell in content.

Lonnie Graham (b. 1954)

Lonnie Graham is a photographer, installation artist, and cultural activist investigating methods by which the arts may be used to achieve tangible meaning in people’s lives. Based in Philadelphia, he is a Professor of Visual Art at Pennsylvania State University and has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts. For more than three decades, he has created a series of photographs titled A Conversation with the World.

A Conversation with the World comprises work done in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Europe, and the Americas. Graham meets individuals and, through mutual trust, makes a portrait and records a conversation. Regardless of age, gender or nationality, all were asked the same eight questions pertaining to origins, family, life, death, values, tradition, and thoughts on Western Culture. Their individual portraits and responses make up the content of the project that the artist hopes will “delve beneath the superficial patina of cultural differences to explore the essential and fundamental motivations of human beings in order to clearly illustrate the bond that is inherently our humanity.”

Adia, Gorse Island (Ile de Goree), Sénégal, 2003 (later printing)

archival digital print

10-1/8 x 7-7/8 inches (image)

11 x 8-3/4 inches (sheet)

signed, titled and dated ‘03 verso

from the series, Conversation with the World

Man With Food for Cow, Muguga, Kenya, 2009 archival digital print 10 x 8 inches (image); 11 x 9 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and dated verso from the series, Conversation with the World

Lonnie Graham (b. 1954)

Man with Bicycle, Muguga Road, Kenya, 1998 archival digital print 10 x 8 inches (image); 11 x 8-1/2 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and dated in pencil verso from the series, Conversation with the World

Alvin (1928-2000)Hollingsworth

Hollingsworth was born in Harlem to Barbadian immigrants. While still a teen, he worked after school as an artist assistant at Holyoke Publishing Company for Catman Comics. Hollingsworth continued with his own syndicated comics in the early 1950’s while attending the College of the City of New York. He decided later to concentrate on fine art and began painting in an abstract expressionist style.

Hollingsworth tended to work in themes - working out his ideas in a variety of media. One of his themes was The Women. “I take my hat off doubly to the Black woman,” he was quoted in an interview published in Black Art, An International Quarterly (Fall 1977). “I wanted people to recognize the pride of women, the spiritual quality of women, the sacrifices of women.” Hollingsworth’s first one man show, Exodus, was held at the Ward Eggleston Gallery, NY in 1961. He produced paintings, drawings, and collages both abstract and representational in style. Among Hollingsworth’s series were Cry City (1963-65), The Prophet Series (1970),

and the Subconscious Series. He was a member of Spiral, along with other notable African American artists like Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Earl Miller, Norman Lewis and Hale Woodruff.

Throughout his long and varied career, Hollingsworth also created and hosted the television show, You’re Part of Art on NBC in 1970, was an instructor at the Art Student’s League, and a professor at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.

Drummer, c. 1965; oil on masonite, 30 x 10-3/4 inches, signed.

Curlee Raven Holton (b. 1951)

Curlee Raven Holton is a printmaker and painter whose work has been exhibited professionally for over twenty-five years in more than thirty one-person shows and over eighty group shows. Holton earned his M.F.A. with honors from Kent State University and his B.F.A. from Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in Drawing and Printmaking. Since 1991 he has taught Printmaking and African American Art History at Lafayette College in Easton, PA and is also the founding director of the Experimental Printmaking Institute. Works produced by EPI have been included in such prestigious collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The High Museum; Allentown Art Museum; and Yale University of Art Gallery.

His exhibitions have included prestigious national and international venues such as Egypt’s 7th International Biennale; Taller de arts Plasticas Rufino Tamayo in Oaxaca,

Mexico; the Cleveland Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is in many private and public collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; The Discovery Museum of Art and Science, Bridgeport, Connecticut; the West Virginia Governor’s Mansion; the Foundation of Culture Rodolfo Morales, Oaxaca, Mexico; Yale University Art Gallery; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Pennsylvania; and the Library of Congress. (REF: Petrucci Family Foundation)

It’s the Mysteries, Not the Histories, 1993 mixed media; photography, collage, acrylic on canvas 38 x 36 inches signed and dated; titled with a label verso

A World Apart, A World Together, 2011 serigraph on wove paper

10 x 16 inches (image)

14 x 20 inches (sheet)

Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 1/10

Curlee Raven Holton (b. 1951)

Farewell to the Flesh, 1998

Etching

18 x 24 inches (image)

21 x 29 inches (sheet)

Signed, titled, dated, and numbered A/P III

and intaglio on tan wove paper

(b. 1951)

Signed, titled, and dated

Curlee Raven Holton

Rocky, 1995

Watercolor on paper

9 x 12 inches

It’s Not a Mask, It’s a Faith, 1993

Etching on wove paper

37 x 27 inches

Signed, titled, and dated A/P

Tomas Pineda Matus (b. 1968)

Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Tomas Pineda Matus composes his paintings with the qualities and characteristics recreated from the ancient world. He put us in a place where life can be a celebration of harmony, friendliness and sensuality - a ritual of relationships in a conflictive society. His pictorial compositions add a modern element to those ancient stories of giving and receiving which help to anchor these ideas of old into our current way lo life. Matus acquired his iconographic legacy from the Museum of Natural History in the United States.

He is indebted to the remote iconography of ancient Egypt, Nubians, Sumerians, Minoan and Greek culture. He is inspired by rituals that even predate the history of art. The atmosphere of mutual benefit and comradeship prominent in his pictorial representations refers to one of the more personal elements that the artist witnessed during his stay in Tehuantepec: the material exchange of goods which culminates in a

form of spiritual transaction or exchange of essences. Based on this observation Matus depicts scenes where women with their fine features and elongated bodies offer cloths, plants and other articles to symbolize an offering only relegated to females.

Due to the intimately ritual characteristic of many of his images, Matus' iconography is totemic, which he expresses by repeating bull-like forms and marine figures in his paintings as well as the masks which proliferate his other works. To have rituals you must have totems and symbols and Matus’ images use both to invoke representations of the rituals of harmony and conformity which were the foundation of ancient times. As a consequence, the telluric elements, (the bull), the marine elements, (the fish) and ceremonial elements, (the masks) are included and subtly emphasized in his images of the life of these female creators and maintainers of peace and alliances.

Terracotta Time (Color Inside Out), 2014 etching on wove paper

24 x 31 inches (image)

30-1/4 x 36 inches (sheet)

signed, dated, titled and numbered, P.A. , V/V

Tomas Pineda Matus (b. 1968)

Before the Embrace, 2010 etching on BFK Rives paper

20 x 16 inches (image)

30 x 22 inches (sheet)

Signed, titled, and dated (Antes del A Grazo); P.A. (artist proof)

Ozier Muhammad (b. 1950)

Muhammad was the grandson of Elijah Muhammad, who founded and led the Nation of Islam from 1934-1975. He studied photography and earned a B.A. in the field from Columbia College in Chicago.

Muhammad worked as a photojournalist for the New York Times from 1992-2014. He won the George Polk Award in 1984 for news photography. He also worked for Ebony Magazine, The Charlotte Observer, and Newsday (in 1985, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting with Joshua Friedman and Dennis Bell for their series on the plight of the hungry in Africa. His final job before retiring was with the New York Times. With the Times, he covered Nelson Mandela’s campaign for the presidency of South Africa and his trip to New York.

Namibia, 1989 silver print 14 x 11 inches signed, dated and titled in pencil verso

Untitled, 1974; oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches, signed

Otto Neals (b. 1931)

Otto Neals attended the Brooklyn High School for Special Trades 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 mid-1950s, 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”), and then five of those members 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)

Otto Neals (b. 1931)

Mother and Child, 1974 oil on canvas

36 x 22 inches signed

(1888-1946)

Mother Africa, 1937 pencil drawing on paper 15 x 11 inches signed, titled, dated inscribed verso, “Property of Berenice Abbott and given by Elizabeth McCausland New School. Pencil drawing by Horace Pippin 1937 title ‘Mother Africa’ sitter unknown.”

Catalog note: Abbott was an important photographer active in New York in the 1930s-40s, and her partner was Elizabeth McCausland, an influential art critic.

Horace Pippin (attribution)

James Amos Porter (1905-1970)

As the first scholar to provide a thorough and critical analysis of the contributions of African-Americans 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 African-American 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. 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.

Lagos,

Nigeria, 1964

oil on canvas

12 x 20 inches

Signed and dated

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Donald and Isabel Stewart, Chicago, IL. Dr. Stewart was the 6th president of Spelman College from 1976-1986.

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.

John Rozelle (b.

1944)

A St Louis native, John Rozelle graduated with a B.F.A. from Washington University in St Louis (formerly known as the St Louis School of Fine Art), and a Masters of Fine Art from Fontbonne University (also in St Louis). Rozelle later taught at Fontbonne before becoming a tenured Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1989 and was included in the exhibit, 25 Years of AfricanAmerican Art at the Studio Museum.

He has participated in exhibitions across the country at venues including the St Louis Art Museum; African American Cultural Center, University of Illinois-Chicago; Elmhurst College; Margaret Harwell Museum; St Louis Community College at Forest Park; Fontbonne University; University of Minnesota; Iowa State University; Isobel Neal Gallery (Chicago); Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago); South Side Community Art Center; Spertus Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Gettysburg College; University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; University of Michigan; California African American Museum; J.B. Speed Museum; Peg Alston Fine Arts (NY); Studio Museum in Harlem; African American Museum, Philadelphia; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Washington University (St Louis); and the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, D.C.).

Rozelle worked in various mediums, often combining them, including painting, collage,

photography, and sculpture. He was included in the exhibition, African American Abstraction: St Louis Connections in 2008 at the St Louis Art Museum, a show which also featured work by Norman Lewis, Beauford Delaney, Oliver Jackson, and Phillip Hampton. In 1990, he was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 1998, he was commissioned to install his Middle Passage Project at the Dred Scott Courthouse in St Louis.

His work is in the collections of several museums, including the St Louis Art Museum, The California Afro-American Museum, The Museum of African American Art (Tampa), Mississippi Museum of Art, Spertus Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Margaret Harwell Museum.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Apart-Hate, c. 1990 acrylic, graphite, fabric, cardboard, newspaper, wire mesh, pennies and other found articles on canvas 78 x 108 inches signed verso, titled (recto, l.r.)

This work is one of Rozelle’s most direct protest pieces directed toward the Apartheid regime. He has incorporated direct text from newspapers with abstract symbolism. The dominant colors have been purposely limited to white, black, and red.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Slegs vir nie Blankes (Non-Europeans Only), 1987

acrylic, fabric, lithography and shells on canvas

41 x 48 inches

Signed, dated and titled verso.

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act No 49 of 1953 forced segregation in all public amenities, public buildings, and public transport with the aim of eliminating contact between Whites and other races. “Europeans Only” and “Non-Europeans Only” signs were put up. The act was repealed in 1990.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Bantustans, c. 1980

acrylic on canvas 30-1/4 x 43 inches

signed and titled on stretcher, verso

The Bantustans (also known as "homelands") were a cornerstone of the “grand apartheid” policy of the 1960s and 1970s, justified by the apartheid government as benevolent “separate development.” The Bantustans were created by the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959, which abolished indirect representation of blacks in Pretoria and divided Africans into ten ethnically discrete groups, each assigned a traditional “homeland.” Established on the territorial foundations imposed by the Land Act of 1913 (amended in 1936), the homelands constituted only 13% of the land – for approximately 75% of the population.

The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 declared that all Africans were citizens of “homelands,” rather than of South Africa itself - a step

toward the government's ultimate goal of having no African citizens of South Africa. Between 1976 and 1981, four homelands – Transkei, Venda, Bophuthatswana, and Ciskei – were declared "independent" by Pretoria, and eight million Africans lost their South African citizenship. None of the homelands were recognized by any other country. Limiting African political rights to the homelands was widely opposed, and, in 1986, South African citizenship was restored to those people who were born outside the four “independent” homelands. After 1994, the homelands were reabsorbed into South Africa.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Descent of Nommo/Passage, 2000 mixed media collage on board 24 x 24”

signed, dated and titled

Nommo are ancestral spirits of the Dogon (Mali) people. The Nommos descended from the sky in a vessel accompanied by fire and thunder. After their arrival they created a reservoir of water and remained inhabitants of a watery environment.

Falaise of Bandiagara, 2000 acrylic and mixed media on board 23-3/4 x 23-7/8 inches signed, dated, titled, verso

The Cliff of Bandiagara or “Land of the Dogons” is located in Mali and is a sandy escarpment about 90 miles long. It is listed in the UNESCO World Heritage list (as of 1989). The Dogons arrived in the 14th century and populated the area.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

lot of two photographs; Ghana Slave Castle, c. 1988 14 x 10 inches signed verso

Rozelle traveled to the Cape Coast Slave Castle and spent 10 days taking photographs.

“

At Cape Coast, there was this hole in the ground, 30 feet down, with just a little slit to see out of. I thought I would be like, ‘OK, I’m prepared for this.’ But I cried. I really, really cried.”

Through site photographs of remaining holding cells, Rozelle gives (viewers) a sense of the cramped and horrific conditions that existed for those awaiting deportation.

Ghana served as a hub during the transatlantic slave trade because of its coastline and geographic location in West Africa. Nearly 40 slave castles operated in Ghana alone. The slave traders brought in people from different African countries, but most of them spent their last moments on the continent in Ghana. Millions of Africans were forcibly led onto slave ships from these coastal locations.

The Cape Coast Castle was originally built in 1653 by the Swedish Africa Company for the trade of timber and gold. Later the structures were altered with the addition of underground dungeons that held thousands of slaves at a time waiting to be put on ships headed for the Americas.

lot of two photographs; Middle Passage Series (Ghana), c. 1988

lot of two photographs

14 x 10 inches

signed verso

lot of two photographs; Middle Passage Series (Ghana), c. 1988

lot of two photographs

14 x 10 inches

signed verso

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Middle Passage Series, 1988-1994

acrylic with elements of collage on canvas

48 x 48 inches

signed, dated and titled verso

Exhibited: Old Courthouse, St Louis (the location of the Dred Scott trial in 1846), 1998.

Middle Passage Series, 1995 assemblage; acrylic, wooden dowels, string on board 48 x 48 inches signed, dated and titled verso

Exhibited: Old Courthouse, St Louis (the location of the Dred Scott trial in 1846), 1998.

This work symbolizes the hull of the slave ship and the African people packed together. The colorful threads represent the culture and individualism they had and deserved--human identity that could never be stolen or erased despite their circumstances.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Middle Passage Series, 1988-1994

acrylic and fabric with elements of collage on canvas

48 x 48 inches

signed, dated and titled verso

Exhibited: Old Courthouse, St Louis (the location of the Dred Scott trial in 1846), 1998

Middle Passage Series (MPP8), 1995 assemblage mounted on board with found objects (implements) 48 x 48 inches

signed, dated and titled

Exhibited: Old Courthouse, St Louis (the location of the Dred Scott trial in 1846), 1998.

Illustrated: St Louis Post-Dispatch, in an article written about the exhibition, February 1, 1998.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Middle Passage Series, 1988-1994 sculptural assemblage; wooden ironing boards, found objects, printed cotton and rope 55 x 15 inches (each component); installed: 55 x 51" (with 3" gap between the two components) hangs on the wall signed verso

In an interview with the St Louis Post-Dispatch...the artist explains that the ironing board symbolizes the domestic labor to which African American women were relegated and also the shape parallels that of the slave ships. These symbols were also used by artists such as Willie Cole and Malcolm Bailey in their work.

John Rozelle (b. 1944)

Cannae, 1989 acrylic, cardboard and cast paper pulp collage on canvas 60 x 40 inches signed, dated and titled verso

In 216 B.C., Hannibal seized a large supply depot in Cannae (in southeast Italy), thereby positioning himself between the Roman army and crucial sources of supply. The battle of Cannae is considered one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and one of the worst defeats in Roman history.

Hannibal (Barca), 1989

acrylic and cast paper pulp collage elements on canvas

72 x 87 inches

signed, dated and titled verso

Hannibal Barca was born in 247 B.C. in Carthage (in North Africa, near present-day Tunisia). He grew up to be a legendary general and statesman who fought against the Roman Republic. Hannibal invaded Italy by crossing the Alps with North African war elephants.

Danny Simmons (b. 1953)

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 .

Photo: Mary Osunlane.

Long Way Home, 2023 mixed media on two stretched canvases with a fabric panel joining them 77 x 24 inches overall dimensions each stretched canvas (top and bottom) is 30 x 24 inches, and the fabric panel is 17 x 24 inches. signed, dated and titled

Arthur Rimbaud's House in Harar, 1975 color etching on paper 14-3/4 x 22 inches, full margins signed, titled, with AP

Vincent Smith (1929-2004)

Brooklyn native Vincent Smith documented some of the most compelling events in 20th century America, from the jazz clubs of the New York avant garde music scene, to the burgeoning civil rights movement, and the Black Arts Movement. After a tumultuous youth, Smith found new direction in art, a vocation he completely immersed himself in, both as a student and as a working artist. He took classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and the Art Students League, NY. He traveled to Maine to study on scholarship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Smith drew inspiration from African-American artist Jacob Lawrence and was mentored by Lawrence and Romare Bearden.

His first solo show was held at the Brooklyn Museum Art School Gallery in 1955. He participated in numerous prestigious exhibits throughout his career, including at Roko

Gallery (NYC), 1955; Market Place Gallery, Harlem, 1956-58; CORE (NYC), 1966; National Academy of Design, 1967; Studio Museum in Harlem, 1969 (one-man); Fisk University, 1970; Pratt Graphics Center, 1972-73; Brooklyn College, 1969; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1970; Illinois State University, 1971; Whitney Museum, 1971. Smith curated the show, Unbroken Circle: Exhibition of African-American Artists of the 1930’s and 1940’s, held at Kenkeleba House, NY in 1986 - of which a majority of the artists make up Melvin Holmes’s collection.

His work can be found in many private and public collections such as The Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA New York, The National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Yale University, New Haven.

Vincent Smith (1929-2004)

Ethiopian Women, c. 1974 lithograph on BFK Rives paper

16 x 21 inches (image)

22 x 30 inches (sheet)

signed, titled, AP

This work is based on Smith's 1974 pastel and collage, Ethiopian Women Wearing Traditional Shamma

Benin Shrine, c. 1975 color etching on paper

14-1/2 x 22 inches (image)

22 x 30 inches (sheet)

signed, titled, with AP

Warrior Madonnas, c. 1970 color woodblock print

12-1/4 x 11-1/4 inches (image)

signed and titled

Charles (1931-2005)Young

“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 was recently included in the exhibition, Afro-American Images 1971, The Vision of Percy Ricks, October 2021-January 2022 at the Delaware Art Museum.

Charles (1931-2005)Young

Warrior, c. 1970 woodblock print 16 x 12 inches (image) signed and numbered 11/70

Untitled (Mother and Child), 1975 watercolor on paper 24-1/2 x 20 inches

signed and dated (inscribed verso, “Africa”)

Charles (1931-2005)Young

Untitled, pair of village scenes, 1975 lot of two ink drawings on paper 17 x 13-1/2 inches each

signed and dated

12 1/2 x 16 inches (image) 16 x 24 inches (sheet)

signed and numbered in pencil 4/6

Untitled, c. 1970 color woodblock print

Charles (1931-2005)Young

watercolor on paper

26 x 20 inches signed

Untitled, African Market Scene, c. 1975

Untitled (pair of drawings), 1975 lot of two ink drawings depicting African scenes ink on paper

17 x 13-1/2 inches (each) signed and dated