Simmie Knox: Selected Works

The Kreeger Museum

February 15th - April 26th, 2025

This page is intentionally left blank

About The Collaborative

David and Carmen Kreeger were devoted patrons of the arts and the Washington, DC arts community. They supported countless Washington-area artists including Sam Gilliam, Simmie Knox, Thomas Downing, Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Ed McGowin, and Albert Stadler, purchasing their work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art biennials, area galleries, and directly from artists in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Collaborative is a guest artist exhibition program developed to support Washington-area artists.

“We are thrilled to be in partnership with artists and arts organizations across the city to present work of contemporary Washington-area artists. The Collaborative furthers our mission by supporting and spotlighting the immense talent of visual and performing artists in our city. We are honored to champion the work of these artists and provide many of them the opportunity to present their work in a museum for the first time.”

Helen Chason Director

The Kreeger Museum

About Simmie Knox

A graduate of Tyler School of Art at Temple University (BFA, Magna Cum Laude; MFA) in Philadelphia, Simmie Knox exhibited at museums and galleries as an abstract artist in the 1970s. In 1971, Knox was selected to participate in the Thirty-Second Biennial of Contemporary American Painting at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Throughout the 70s, Knox worked at The Museum of African Art (later the National Museum of African Art) and taught art at various colleges,universities in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia.

Since 1976, Knox has specialized in oil portraiture. He has been commissioned by private individuals, organizations, and institutions, and he has painted portraits of a U.S. President and First Lady, two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, a U.S. cabinet member, a U.S. senator and congressman, a governor of the State of Alabama, a mayor of New York City, state senators, judges, respected civic leaders, educators, religious leaders, military officers, businessmen, sports figures, entertainment celebrities, and private individuals.

This page is intentionally left blank

Simmie Knox

A Place: Suspended 1970

Acrylic and enamel on canvas (diptych)

A Place: Suspended

This abstract diptych by Knox from 1970, A Place: Suspended, represents a different, earlier moment in the artist’s career, before his focus on portraiture. The large-scale work is composed of two panels covered with surging waves of color, from rich earthy reds and yellows to deep, vibrant blues and greens. In a 2007 interview with Amy Cavanaugh for the DCist, Knox explained that the motivation behind A Place: Suspended is color. “It’s a piece that I produced because at the time I was really concerned with the movement of color when it’s sprayed as opposed to painted, and the visual effects you could provide,” he says, “[Spraying color] creates a kind of an illusion.”

A Place: Suspended was included in the 32nd Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1971, where David and Carmen Kreeger first saw the work before acquiring it. Fresh from earning his B.F.A. and M.F.A. at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Knox moved to the Washington area the following year, in 1972, and soon turned away from abstraction to focus exclusively on portraiture. While Knox has remarked that the change was driven by his penchant for capturing the human figure, he attributes his time working in abstract painting as important to his understanding of space and color.