March 12, 2022 African American Fine Art Preview Catalog

BLACK ART AUCTION Saturday, March 12, 2022 12PM EST

BLACK ART AUCTION SPRING AUCTION LOOK BOOK Saturday, March 12, 2022 12PM EST

AMERICAN FABRIC QUILT, PINE BURR PATTERN , 1935 attributed to the Gee's Bend, Alabama circle of quilters 80 x 71 inches unsigned Provenance: family collection, Alabama; a single African American family brought their collection of quilts to Chicago around 1950.

The Pine Burr pattern quilt is constructed of folded triangles (prairie points) sewn side-by-side onto a foundation of concentric circles. The resulting design resembles a target (or an Alma Thomas painting). The pattern requires such a large amount of fabric, a bed-sized example is quite heavy, weighing over 25 pounds. Thought to be influenced in part by patterned African textiles, female slaves used strips of cloth to make bedcovers. In the post-bellum years and into the 20th century, the women of Gee’s Bend made quilts to keep themselves and their children warm as they lived in primitive shacks.

The Freedom Quilting Bee was organized as an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement in 1966. When Black workers were losing their jobs in retaliation for attempting to register to vote, the women formed an economic cooperative to sell their sell their quilts and raise money for their families.

The Pine Burr pattern became the official quilt of the state of Alabama in 1997.

The flour sack backing on this example dates it from pre-World War II, because the standard weight for a sack of flour changed from 24 to 25 pounds, and these are stamped 24 pounds.

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LEROY ALLEN (1958-2007) Leroy Allen earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas in 1977. While working at Hallmark in Kansas City, Missouri, he met a group of talented black artists known as “The Kansas City 6” who inspired him to enroll in painting classes at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1990. He became a noted figurative artist in little more than a decade, his work appearing in many exhibitions and receiving much critical success.

He was adept at working in oils, charcoal, watercolors, and pastels, which allowed him to reveal a greater depth of humanity and character in his subjects. Allen’s favorite subjects were young people. “I like the youth, the strength.” A particularly poignant moment in his career occurred when the family of one of his youthful subjects attended the exhibition of the painting, Sundrops, at the Mississippi Museum of Art. He was equally talented in his rendering of landscapes, especially those of his favorite fishing spots. “They are a part of me,” he said, “…I see backroads places that most people don’t see.”

Allen participated in the American Watercolor Society’s 133rd Annual Exhibition, NY (2000) and the National Watercolor Society’s 78th Annual Exhibition, CA. He had a solo exhibition at the Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans, and participated in group shows at the Jazz Museum in Kansas City.

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Grandma’s Water, 1997 oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches signed and dated; artist's label verso Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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LEROY ALLEN (1958-2007)

Morning Mist, 1997 oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches signed and dated; artist's label verso Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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LEROY ALLEN (1958-2007)

Happy Cause I’m Going Home, 1995 oil on card 5 1/16 x 7 1/16 inches (image) 9 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches (as framed) signed and dated Provenance: the artist to a prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO Exhibited: Jazz on View, St. Louis Artist’s Guild, MO, 1998; Vasil and Anita Eftimoff Prize.

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LEROY ALLEN (1958-2007)

Set, 2004 oil on canvas 11 x 14 inches signed and dated Provenance: the artist to a prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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LEROY ALLEN (1958-2007)

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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.

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.

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

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Landscape With House, c. 1938 lithograph 12 x 16 inches (image) 16 x 22 inches (sheet) estate stamped in the image; authenticity certified verso by Aida Alston Winters, the artist’s sister

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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006) Poster for Congo Square, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, 2001 screenprint 33 x 15 inches signed by the artist in pen edition of 500 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 largescale 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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MASON ARCHIE (B. 1959) Mason Archie was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. He began his career as a sign painter, but experimented with realism in his spare time. There was a rich tradition of landscape painting in the eastern half of the state of Indiana to the Ohio border. The Hoosier Group painters (T.C. Steele, Otto Stark, William Forsyth, Richard Gruelle, and John Ottis Adams) along with the talented artists of the “Richmond Group” (painters such as J.E. Bundy and George Baker in Richmond, Indiana, which is located on the Ohio border not far from Dayton) who were active from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century would have been a major influence. While all of these painters were Impressionists, they frequently leaned toward luminism in their style, which is a relevant comparison to this work.

Archie was the 2007 recipient of the Creative Renewal Fellowship from The Art Council of Indianapolis/Lilly Endowment and a perennial award winner from 2007-2009 in the Hoosier Salon's Annual Juried Exhibit, one of the

oldest competitions in the country. His works are in the collections of the Indiana State Museum, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American Art, Nationwide Corporation, Wells Fargo, Elanco, Division of Eli Lilly, Eskenazi Health, Community South Hospital, and a host of private collections around the country.

His professional affiliations include the Oil Painters of America, Hoosier Salon Patron Association and Fine Arts Gallery, Portrait Society of America, International Guild of Realism, African-American Visual Artist Guild, and the Dayton Visual Artist Center.

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Wildflowers at Big Sur, 2006 oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches signed, dated, titled Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia

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RALPH ARNOLD (1928-2006) Artist and educator, Ralph Arnold, is best known for his masterful collages and assemblages which he began making in the early 1960’s. The theme of gender and its role in social and individual identity appears frequently in Arnold’s work.

Arnold was born in 1928 and raised both in Knoxville, Tennessee and Chicago. His interest in art began as a teen at Blue Island High School (now Dwight D. Eisenhower High School) in Chicago where he worked in the print shop. Here he was exposed to printmaking and working with paper.

Arnold briefly attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign but left to serve in the army in Korea. When he returned to Chicago, he received his BFA from Roosevelt University. He also attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his MFA. He began working as an educator in the 60’s. Arnold taught at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Rockford College, Rockford, IL; Barat College, Lake Forest, IL; and Loyola University, Chicago, where he served as the chairman of the Fine Arts department.

During his career he was represented by Benjamin Galleries from 1964-1969, Gilman Galleries, and Van Straaten Gallery, all in Chicago, which held solo exhibitions in their respective spaces. Other solo shows included Some Old, Some New, South Side Community Art Center, 1973; The Real and Abstract: The Art of Ralph Arnold, Chicago State University,1982; and Ralph Arnold Unmasked: From Pop to Political, Loyola University, 2012, among many others.

His work was featured in the group exhibitions: Afro-American Artists, 18001969, School District and Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center, PA, 1969; Directions in Afro-American Art, Cornell University, NY, 1974; Black American Artists/71, Illinois Bell Gallery, Chicago, 1971; Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, 1971; and Violence in Recent American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1968. In 2018, the exhibition The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity, and Politics was held at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.

His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Fisk University,TN; and DePaul University, Chicago.

In 2006, the Ralph Arnold Gallery was established at Loyola as a part exhibition/ part workspace in tribute to his advocacy for the arts.

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Untitled, c.1970 collage on board 15 x 17 inches signed

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BELKIS AYON (1967-1999) 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.

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 Photo: Fowler Museum at UCLA, artist’s portrait: photography and copyright © Werner Gadliger, Zurich. - Original publication: Los Angeles Times

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,

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Untitled (Sin titulo), 1999 lithograph (offset) 20 x 27 7/8 inches signed, dated and numbered 33/40 Printed at the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia.

Illustrated: #99.04, Nkame, Belkis Ayón, Turner (2010), p. 234

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BELKIS AYON (1967-1999)

Tanze, 1986 color lithograph 22 x 13 1/4 inches signed and dated artist's proof Illustrated: #86.15, Nkame, Belkis Ayón, Turner (2010), p.163.

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BELKIS AYON (1967-1999)

Sin Titulo, 1993 collograph 9 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches signed and dated, artist’s trial proof (P/T) Illustrated: #93.17, Nkame, Belkis Ayón, Turner (2010), p. 206.

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BELKIS AYON (1967-1999)

Sin Titulo, 1992 offset lithograph 19 1/4 x 27 inches signed, dated, artist's proof (P/A) Illustrated: #92.01, Nkame, Belkis Ayón, Turner (2010), p. 191.

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BELKIS AYON (1967-1999)

Sin Titulo,1998 collograph 21 1/2 inches (diameter) 31 x 23 inches (sheet) signed, dated, AP for an edition of 45 Illustrated: #98.11, Nkame, Belkis Ayón, Turner (2010), p. 231.

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HERMAN KOFI BAILEY (1931-1981) Herman, also known as "H. Kofi Bailey" and "Kofi X”, was born in Chicago, but grew up in Los Angeles.

He studied at Alabama State University, Howard University and University of Southern California (MFA).

Bailey was concerned with a pan-African worldview, and as a visual artist believed that creating images of black people would work universally to embrace and celebrate positive attitudes toward black people (in the case of non-blacks) and be self-affirming (in the case of black people themselves). Bailey studied with Alain Locke, Sterling Brown, and James Porter at Howard, and after graduating was closely associated with figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Kwame Nkrumah (Nkrumah was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, but he spent 10 years in the United States studying as a young man).

Bailey was best-known for his drawings in charcoal and conte crayon, and the subsequent prints. He exhibited at the High Museum of Art; Spelman College; Delaware Art Museum; and Lewis-Waddell Gallery in Los Angeles.

REF: A Century of African American Art, The Paul R. Jones Collection, Delaware Museum, Amalia Amaki; St James Guide to Black Artists; African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis, p. 146-147.

Photo: Activist Mary Ann Pollar and Herman Kofi Bailey in front of his portrait of George Jackson Photo credit: Cleveland Glover and Earl Harris.

Oakland Post. September 1972.

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African Princess, 1973 lithograph 22 x 18 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 104/200

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HERMAN KOFI BAILEY (1931-1981)

Honeybunch, 1979 lithograph 20 1/2 x 17 inches signed, dated, numbered, 381/400 dedicated to Varnette Honeywood: "To Lady Varnette , may God be with you always"

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HERMAN KOFI BAILEY (1931-1981)

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ERNIE BARNES (1938-2009) Ernie Barnes began his career as an offensive lineman - playing pro football for six seasons with the San Diego Chargers, the New York Titans, and the Denver Broncos. Eventually, Barnes grew disillusioned with the conflict. In interviews he had been known to say that he hated the violence and physical torment of the sport.

He proposed that he take up the position of official artist of the American Football League. The owners agreed and with the support of Sonny Werblin, owner of the Jets, Barnes’ work was brought to the attention of art critics who compared his work to that of George Bellows.

Barnes attended North Carolina College as an art major on full athletic scholarship. Ed Wilson, who taught sculpting, had a remarkable impact on Barnes. First, he taught him about the work of the early 20th century African American artists. Then, he taught him how to translate his athleticism on the field to the canvas.

Barnes populated his canvasses with elongated forms full of movement and was influenced by the Italian Mannerist painters, as well as Thomas Hart Benton and Charles White. His personal style was accessible and resonated soundly with people. Many of his paintings were found in the homes of major film and television stars and received national exposure through the television and music industries.

Photo: Ernie Barnes, Self portrait, 1968; Ernie Barnes Family Trust

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Football Game, c. 1980 acrylic on heavy paper 26 x 40 inches signed

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ERNIE BARNES (1938-2009)

Rock of Ages, c. 1972 color lithograph 23 1/2 x 19 inches signed in the margin This print is one of the twelve included in the Beauty of the Ghetto collection.

Includes another work: a mass-produced photographic reproduction of a painting by Annie Lee (Six No Uptown), framed and under glass.

In 2019, the California African American Museum (Los Angeles) held a retrospective of Barnes’ work which included art and ephemera documenting his life and career and featured the iconic painting The Sugar Shack.

The North Carolina Museum of History (Raleigh), also held the exhibition, The North Carolina Roots of Artist Ernie Barnes from June 29, 2018-May 27, 2019.

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ERNIE BARNES (1938-2009)

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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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Little Spanish Mother, 1937/1986 cast bronze sculpture on a black marble base 26 (h) x 7 1/2 (w) x 7 (d) inches (bronze only) 1 x 9 x 9 1/2 inches (base) (total height= 27 inches) signed and dated, A/P Provenance: Collection of Jan Goodman and Jerry Manpearl, Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Manpearl is the co-founder of the Paul Robeson Community Center in Los Angeles and was the President of the Southern California World Trade Association; he clerked for the Chief Justice of the California Courts of Appeal.

Through his interest in the visual arts, he has lent his services to many artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Lewis, and Richmond Barthé.

Illustrated: Barthé, His Life in Art, Samella Lewis, p.

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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)

Stevedore, 1937/1986 1937/1986 cast bronze sculpture on a rojo alicante marble base 26 (h) x 17 (w) x 15 1/2 (d) inches (bronze only) 2 x 20 x 6 inches (base) (total height=28 inches) signed and dated 1986, A/P Provenance: Collection of Jan Goodman and Jerry Manpearl, Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Manpearl is the co-founder of the Paul Robeson Community Center in Los Angeles and was the President of the Southern California World Trade Association; he clerked for the Chief Justice of the California Courts of Appeal. Through his interest in the visual arts, he has lent his services to many artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Lewis, and Richmond Barthé.

Illustrated: Barthé, His Life in Art, Samella Lewis, p.

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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)

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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)

Angry Christ, 1946/1986 cast bronze sculpture 23 1/2 (h) x 13 (d) x 12 1/2 (w) inches (bronze only) on a black marble base, 15 1/8 (w) x 12 (d) x 1 3/4 inches (total height=25 inches) signed and dated, 1986; A/P Provenance: Collection of Jan Goodman and Jerry Manpearl, Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Manpearl is the co-founder of the Paul Robeson Community Center in Los Angeles and was the President of the Southern California World Trade Association; he clerked for the Chief Justice of the California Courts of Appeal. Through his interest in the visual arts, he has lent his services to many artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Lewis, and Richmond Barthé.

Illustrated: Barthé, His Life in Art, Samella Lewis, p.

Catalog note: this impressive image by Barthé, The Angry Christ, has never before been offered at auction.

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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989)

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Musicians, n.d. paper collage on masonite 30 x 22 inches signed 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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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Morning (Carolina Morning), 1979 color lithograph on wove paper 19-1/4 x 24-7/8 inches signed and numbered 28/175 GG#91 Illustrated: Gelburd, A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, 80.

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

The Fall of Troy, (from the Odysseus Suite), 1979 color screenprint on wove paper 18-1/4 x 22-1/4 inches signed and numbered XV/LXXV GG#63 Illustrated: Gelburd, 60

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Mecklenburg Autumn, 1979 color lithograph on wove paper 23-1/8 x 18 inches signed and numbered 99/175 Published by London Arts, Inc. GG#90 Illustrated: Gelburd, 77

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

Pepper Jelly Lady, 1975 color lithograph 25 34 x 21 18 inches (image) signed and numbered

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

The Lantern, 1979 lithograph on paper 23 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches (image) 28 1/2 x 19 7/8 inches (sheet) signed and numbered in pencil GG #89 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988)

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MILTON BENNETT (20th century) Untitled, 1989 crayon rubbing on paper 14 x 11 inches (sheet size) signed, dated, and numbered 95/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

“This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber “neutral pH” archival paper.” from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter

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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 AfricanAmerican 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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Family of Fire, 1986 lithograph printed in brown on cream wove paperr 20 1/2 x 26 inches (image), full margins signed, titled, dated AP alternative titles: (Family of Six/Brown Family) dedicated in lower margin, with “Move Forward in Progress”, written in pencil by the artist.

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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, numbered 6/100

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

Three Children, 1983 lithograph 21 x 14 inches (full margins) signed, titled, dated numbered 96/100

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

Star Gazers, 1983 lithograph 21 x 12-1/4 inches (full margins) signed, dated in pencil 88, dated in the block 85, titled, and numbered 94/100, A

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001)

Our Grandmothers, 1994, offered here individually lithograph on cream wove paper 24 x 18 inches (full sheet) signed and numbered 36/60

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McARTHUR BINION (B. 1946) Untitled, 1980 five color lithograph 16 x 24 inches (image) 22-1/2 x 30 inches (sheet) signed, dated, with “Printer’s Proof Three” (aside from an edition of 50) Binion was born in Macon, Mississippi, and studied at Wayne State University and Cranbrook in Detroit (he was the first African American to achieve a M.F.A. from Cranbrook).

Active since the 1970s, Binion’s work is abstract minimalism. He identifies as a “Rural modernist” and has said that his work “begins at a crossroads—at the intersection of Bebop improvisation and Abstract Expressionism”.

Binion pulls stylistic tropes common to folk artists as well, borrowing quilting patterns, layering photographic imagery and motifs and grids. He does all this while using one implement: his characteristic “crayon,” or paint stick, which allowed him to move past oil paint. “In 1972 when I started to use them, they were basically industrial marking sticks,” he recalls. Binion effectively

converts an elementary tool into a refined hand-held instrument. He thrives in the effort of that conversion, having developed an ornate and labored approach that demands strenuous hours, and—as Binion has noted—resonates with the cotton-picking of his childhood. He had to train himself to be ambidextrous to negotiate hand fatigue, and works an entire surface of a painting in one sitting, before returning to rework that surface the next day or week or month.

Some works take years to complete. This approach carries over to his print-making as well, exemplified by the image here.

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BENJAMIN BRITT (1923-1996) Untitled, c. 1970 oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches signed Benjamin Britt studied with Samuel Joseph Brown in Philadelphia in the early 1940s and continued his education at the Art Students League in New York City. In New York, he met Salvador Dali, and Surrealism would become a recurring theme in his works thereafter.

Britt’s work includes a variety of subject matter, but he was foremost a figurative painter, placing the human figure in drastically different settings from traditional African motifs to surrealist scenes of fantasy.

His work is in the collection of the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, and may be seen in the book, In Search of Missing Masters: The Lewis Tanner Moore Collection of African American Art, 2008.

The artist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, April 2, 1967

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BENJAMIN BRITT (1923-1996)

Untitled, c. 1970 oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches signed

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BENJAMIN BRITT (1923-1996)

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SELMA BURKE (1900-1995) Red Torso, 1935 carved African marble 22 x 6 x 7 inches (sculpture) 4-1/2 x 10 x 10 inches (base) 26-1/2 inches (total height) black laminated base (wood core) signed, letter from the artist accompanies the lot discussing it’s creation Exhibited: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Brooklyn Museum of Art, MacMillan Gallery (NYC) Provenance: the artist to Dr. John Young, 1987, thence by descent to Mr. Patric Ellholm.

Although Selma Burke displayed an early aptitude for sculpting, it wasn’t until the early stages of midlife that she actively pursued art as a career. She was initially employed as the private nurse of a wealthy heiress, who later became a supportive patron. Burke received her M.F.A. from Columbia University at the age of 41 and became involved with the Harlem Artists Guild and the WPA. During the 1930s, she traveled across Europe studying and honing her skills as a painter under Aristide Maillol of Paris and ceramics under Wiener Werkstatte master, Michael Powolny in Vienna.

The refinement of her craft as a sculptor throughout her career led to important commissions for relief portraits of FDR, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Duke Ellington among others. The portrait she created of FDR served as the model for his image on the US dime used today. Burke was also a

dedicated educator, opening the Selma Burke School of Sculpture in New York City in 1940 and the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, PA in 1968. A nine-foot statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. she completed while in her eighties is on display in Marshall Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. Burke was recognized by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 for her contribution to African American art history.

Her work may be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Spelman College, GA; Atlanta University, GA; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. Photo: Burke and her sculpture of Booker T. Washington, c. 1935; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Instituttion

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SELMA BURKE (1900-1995)

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SELMA BURKE (1900-1995)

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CALVIN BURNETT (1921-2007) Temporary Personal Office, 1997 pen and ink on paper 26-1/2 x 20 inches (image) 31 x 24 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated inscribed, ink from Navvy Yard Series, 1940’s Calvin Burnett was a Boston-based painter and printmaker. He earned degrees from the Massachusetts College of Art and at Boston University (he also eventually taught at the former for 30 years). His early career centered on printmaking and commercial art, but he experimented with nearly all possible mediums, subjects, and styles over the course of his career. Burnett worked on paintings for a considerable time, often on several at once. In 1997 he was forced to quit painting after developing glaucoma.

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010) In her dedication to educating others and advocating for African American art, Margaret Burroughs became a cultural leader and role model. Born in St. Rose, Louisiana in 1917, Burroughs and her family followed the Great Migration north to Chicago in 1922. She made the most of many valuable opportunities throughout her lifetime, beginning at Englewood High School, where she first became interested in art, and became the youngest member of George Neal’s Art Crafts Guild. She later studied at the Chicago Normal School.

At age 22, she founded the South Side Community Art Center, a community organization that continues to serve as a gallery and workshop studio for artists and students. In the early 1950’s, Burroughs started the Lake Meadows Art Fair where African Americans could showcase and sell their art. Burroughs lived in Mexico for a time, where she studied print making and mural painting with the Taller Editorial de Grafica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop) under Leopoldo Mendez, a prominent printmaker of the Diego Rivera circle. When she returned to the States, she and her husband Charles founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in their living room. It remained there for nearly a decade until it moved to its own building in Chicago’s Washington Park.

Burroughs was also an accomplished poet and author of children’s books. In 1975 she received the President’s Humanitarian Award, and in 1977 was distinguished as one of Chicago’s Most Influential Women by

the Chicago Defender. February 1, 1986 was proclaimed “Dr. Margaret Burroughs Day” in Chicago by late Mayor Harold Washington. Burroughs passed away on November 21, 2010.

In 2018, the exhibitions The Art and Influence of Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs and The Time Is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980, were presented concurrently; the former at her beloved museum, and the latter at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. The book South Side Venus: The Legacy of Margaret Burroughs by Mary Ann Cain was also published. Together they provide a closer look at the life and legacy of this remarkable woman who continues to inspire generations.

South Side Stories: The Art and Influence of Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, 1960-1980 is currently on view at the DuSable.

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The Birthday Party, 2002 lithograph 16 x 19 inches (image) 17-1/2 x 23 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated 6/29/02

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

The Quartet, 2007 lithograph 15 x 20 inches (image) 17-1/2 x 23 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and dated 8/28/07

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

Girl Friends, 1986 lithograph 19 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches signed, titled, dated 11/86, and numbered 9/10

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

Untitled Portrait Bust, c. 1962 plaster sculpture with a painted bronze patina 18 (h) x 8 (w) x 9 1/2 (d) inches signed and dated This is a rare, important, early example of Burroughs’ sculpture.

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010)

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NATHANIEL BUSTION (B. 1942) Bustion was born in Alabama and studied at Colorado State University and the Belgium Antwerp Academy of Art before moving to Los Angeles to study at the Otis Art Institute.

He exhibited at the Watts Summer Festival, Gallery 32, Brockman Gallery, USC, the Otis Art Institute and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists). He later taught art at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles City College and Pomona College. His work was included in the collection of the Johnson Publishing Company.

Society must respect and acknowledge the importance of the various cultures before we can become a universal culture -- something we have always been and forgot and gave up along the journey. The challenge our ethics are embedded in our aesthetics. The universe and nation is the Artwork. We are the Artists.

My work grows out of ideas, emotions, power, forms and images within a total universe. I deal with deep suffering, emotions, happiness and man in his environment.

Bustion, similarly to many of the L.A. based artists working in the latter quarter of the 20th century, explored various mediums— painting, printmaking, assemblage, ceramics and sculpture.

Photo: https://lasentinel.net/meet-localartist-nathaniel-bustion.html

Lewis/Waddy, Black Artists on Art ; vol 2, p. 114.

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Mask Series II, 1983 collograph 17 3/4 x 10 inches signed, dated, titled, AP

Mask Series II, 1983 collograph 17 3/'4 x 10 inches signed, dated, titled, AP

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NATHANIEL BUSTION (B. 1942)

Bongowa Mask, 1982 collograph 29 1/2 x 20 inches signed and inscribed AP

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NATHANIEL BUSTION (B. 1942)

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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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Rafaela (Sentada Niña), 1951 color lithograph on cream wove paper 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches dated and inscribed, “To Rosie with Love, Betty” in pencil

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Virgina, 1984 lithograph printed in blue and collage on black wove paper 17 x 14 inches, full margins signed, titled, dated, and numbered 20/32

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Harlem Woman, 1992 lithograph printed in brown-black, with printed fabric collage 24 x 17-1/8 inches, full margins signed, titled, dated, and numbered 4/40

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Naima, 1998 Cast bronze with brown patina and polychrome on wood base 9.5 x 8 x 8.5 inches initialed, E.C. This image depicts one of the artist’s twin granddaughters, Naima Mora, who was the winner of America’s Next Top Model in 2005. Catlett executed at least two similar versions of this image with different surfaces.

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

Survivor, 1984 lithograph 12 x 8 inches signed and numbered, 512/1000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012)

The Dance, 1970 color linoleum cut 15 3/4 x 27 3/4 inches (image), full margins signed, dated, titled, edition /500 in lower margin; numbered in pencil 302 REF: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Lewis, p. 116-117

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DANA CHANDLER, JR. (B. 1941) Still Life, 1981 oil on masonite 24 x 24 inches signed and dated 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, long-time director of the Museum of the National Center of AfroAmerican Artists in Roxbury, said this about Chandler’s work:

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.

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

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.

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

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SCHROEDER CHERRY (B. 1954) Cherry is a native of Washington DC. He earned a BA in painting and puppetry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; a MA from George Washington University and a PhD in museum education from Columbia University.

He exhibited at the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, the Anacostia Museum, and Morgan State University. He is also an adjunct professor in the Morgan State University Museum Studies Program.

His acrylic paintings are often done in a series to tell a story (e.g., the three works in this auction) and employ real objects as collage.

Photo: https://www.jelmamuseum.org/ schroeder-cherry

REF: Black New York Artists of the 20th Century, Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections, p. 55

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Picnic, 1989 acrylic and collage on canvas 30 x 36 inches signed, dated and titled

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SCHROEDER CHERRY (B. 1954)

I Collect, 1988 acrylic and collage on canvas 34 x 44 inches signed, titled, dated

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SCHROEDER CHERRY (B. 1954)

Birthday, 1986 acrylic and collage on canvas 34 x 44 inches signed, dated, titled

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ALBERT CHONG (B. 1958) Joe Beneath the Termite Mound, 1994-1995 gelatin silver print 37 x 28 inches signed and dated later by the artist: 3/31/06 Chong was born in Kingston, Jamaica to Chinese and Afro-Jamaican parents. He moved to Brooklyn in 1977 and attended the School of Visual Arts in NYC. He was active in the New York art scene until he left to further his studies in graduate school at the University of California San Diego. (MFA, 1991).

In 1992 he was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1998 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of photography.

Photo: https://www.colorado.edu/artandarthistory/albert-chong

My work in photography sometimes utilizes found, appropriated and familial photographs as well as many types of objects primarily of an organic nature that serve as shamanic talismans and symbolic and referential signifiers. These works aspire to visually embed the narratives of race and ethnicity within the aesthetic whimsy required to sublimate and catalyze meaning and references. These works use analog and digital layering to create the sometimes dense but usually simple arrangements that infer, relate, connect and signify the complex nature of the struggles of the displaced peoples of the Asian and African diaspora.

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LeRoy CLARKE (1938-2021) Untitled, 1977 color lithograph 18 x 25 inches (image), full margins signed, dated and numbered 115/150

Photo: https://www.leroyclarke.com

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LeRoy CLARKE (1938-2021)

Untitled, Mask, 1977 color lithograph 23 7/8 x 20 1/8 inches signed, dated and numbered 123/150

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LeRoy CLARKE (1938-2021)

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ROBERT COLESCOTT (1925-2009) I Love You Forever, 1993 lithograph 14 x 11 inches signed, titled, dated 7/12/93, and numbered 63/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

“This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber “neutral pH” archival paper.” from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter Robert Colescott was born in Oakland in 1925. He studied at UC-Berkeley and in Paris with French modernist, Fernand Leger. Colescott’s development after his return to the United States soon culminated in works in which masterpieces of the European past were reinterpreted in terms

of a dialogue between tradition and the contemporary life of the black community.

He combined elements from such artist as Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso with the narratives of black themes, events and symbols to create and often humorous new configuration. The reuse of familiar themes was filled with new life and at the same time with a reevaluation of black historic and contemporary reality.

—Udo Kultermann from St James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs editor, St James Press, 1997 Photo: Robert Colescott at Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

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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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G. CALIMAN GLOUCESTER COXE (1907-1999) Exodus #5A, 1980 mixed media; oil emulsion over vinyl, stretched across canvas (beveled stretcher) 43 x 25 1/2 inches stamped signature (by artist); title, date, signature written on verso of canvas, 6-1980 Catalog note: Although this work was executed in 1980, the beveled canvas is reminiscent of the beveled canvases of Gilliam.

Known for his experimental abstract art, Gloucester Caliman Coxe was considered the “dean of Louisville’s African American artists”, a community which included such future luminaries as Bob Thompson and Sam Gilliam. Coxe made a living as an illustrator, worked for local theaters, and created training aids at the Fort Knox Army Base before entering the University of Louisville, in his 40’s, to study art. He was the first African American to receive the Allen R. Hite scholarship and the first black fine arts graduate of the university. Coxe established the Louisville Art Workshop in 1959, where artists of all races could create

and show their work. He exhibited at the Smith-Mason Gallery, Washington D.C. in the 1970’s. In 1995, a retrospective of his work was held at his alma mater. In 2013, his a selection of his work was shown at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.

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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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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005)

Lady, 1987 color etching and aquatint 24 x 17 3/4 inches full margins signed, titled, dated numbered 14/57 Printed by Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, NY (blind stamp, l.r.)

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ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914-2005)

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ALLAN ROHAN CRITE (1910-2007) Sometimes It Causes Me to Tremble, c.

1943 pen and ink with pencil on cream illustration board 15 x 11 1/2 inches (image) signed and titled in pencil lower margin Allan Rohan Crite was born in New Jersey, but spent his entire life in Boston. He graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 1936, and was awarded a BA from Harvard Extension School in 1968. Crite participated in the Public Works of Art Project in 1934 and the Works Progress Administration/ Federal Art Project in 1936, while still a student. He was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936, called New Horizons in American Art held under the auspices of the WPA/FAP. In 1940, Crite was employed as a technical illustrator for the Boston Naval Shipyard, and he worked there until 1971. He had abandoned large-scale oils of neighborhood scenes by the 1940s, and was concentrating on drawings and watercolors.

Historian, diligent researcher, theologian, teacher, philosopher, simple believer, Allan Crite is a bit of all these things, but most of all he is an artist whose agile mind and equally agile hands have never tired of creating a world of images simultaneously local and global, divine and secular, poetic yet unsentimental. His art, marked by narrative and documentary characteristics, retains a simple beauty, simply presented.

A devout Episcopalian, his work soon began to exhibit strong religious themes as well, depicting blacks in interpretations of Biblical stories and African American spirituals. Crite also wrote and illustrated several books, created hand-tooled brass panels that once adorned a monastery, and designed and painted vestments and banners for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge.

His work may be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

-Edmund Barry Gaither, essay to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Allan Rohan Crite, Artist-Reporter of the African American Community; Frye Art Museum, 2001, 23.

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ADGER COWANS (B. 1936) Omowale, 1989 intaglio 8-1/2 x 7 1/2 inches (image) 14 x 11 (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 44/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art.

Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

Adger Cowans is a renowned fine arts photographer and painter whose works have been shown by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Museum of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Harvard Fine Art Museum, Detroit Art Institute, James E. Lewis Museum and numerous other art institutions.

Cowans attended Ohio University where he received a BFA in photography. He furthered his education at the School of Motion Picture Arts and School of Visual Arts in New York.

While serving in the United States Navy, he worked as a photographer before moving to New York, where he later worked with LIFE magazine photographer, Gordon Parks and fashion photographer, Henri Clarke.

Cowans is a founder of International Black Photographers and is a member of Africobra.

Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

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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, 1929-1989, bulk 1960s-1980s. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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Jamaica #4, c. 1970 india ink on paper 8 1/4 x 11 inches signed label verso, Stella Jones Gallery Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) Joy Cadiz, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 15 x 10 inches signed, titled verso Provenance: the artist to private collection, Jamaica 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)

Jazz Dancer, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 12 1/8 x 9 inches signed titled on verso Provenance: the artist to private collection, Jamaica

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936)

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936)

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936)

Senegalese Twist, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches signed titled verso.

Provenance: the artist to private collection, Jamaica

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936)

Janean, c. 1980 mixed media collage on board 13 1/2 x 10 1/4 inches signed titled verso Provenance: the artist to private collection, Jamaica

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936)

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MURRY DEPILLARS (1938-2008) Children at Play, 1969 color lithograph 23 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches signed and dated, inscribed “Dr Nap” The decisive factor in my work is the political and social plight of Blacks throughout the world.

Lewis/Waddy, Black Artists on Art, vol 2, p 27 DePillars received his BA from Roosevelt University (Chicago) and his MA in urban studies from Pennsylvania State University (1970). He also earned a PhD in art education. DePillars’ work frequently depicts cartoon-like drawings depicting African Americans in stereotypical imagery, in an attempt to reverse that mindset by overexaggeration.

He matured as an artist in Chicago in the 1960s-70s, and was associated with both OBAC (Organization of Black American Culture) and AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) both black art movement groups that used art to combat social and racial injustice and also develop an aesthetic that would accurately reflect the history and heritage, as well as the realities, of the black experience.

Contemporary Black Artists in America, as well as at the Art Institute of Chicago, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Southside Community Art Center (Chicago).

His painting, From the Mississippi Delta, 1997,is in the permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

In 2002, the Hampton University Museum exhibited 42 DePillars’ pieces that spanned more than 40 years of his artistic career.

In 2017, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia featured his work in an exhibition entitled, Murry dePillars: Double Vision Photo: Black Artists on Art, v. 2, Lewis/ Waddy.

DePillars exhibited in the controversial exhibit at the Whitney Museum in 1971,

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JEFF DONALDSON (1932-2004) Victory in the Valley of Eshu, 1971 screenprint on wove paper 35-3/4 x 27 inches (image) 40 x 29-7/8 inches (sheet) Printed by Lou Stovall, master printer signed, dated and numbered 96/280 inscribed IMP 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 colorblock images associated with his work in AFRICOBRA. His work was recently featured in the exhibition, Soul of a Nation, Art in the Age of Black Power.

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AARON DOUGLAS (1899-1979) Portrait of a Girl, c. 1935 pencil and crayon on cream paper 13 x 10 inches unsigned Provenance: the artist’s estate (Gregory Ridley, executor) to Karen Coffie; to Samuel Williams.

Illustrated: The Parkway Collection of Important 20th Century African-American Art, p. 6-7 After studying and teaching in the Midwest, Aaron Douglas moved to New York City where he became a part of Alain Locke’s New Negro Movement.

There, he studied with German/ American portrait artist, Winold Reiss, who encouraged Douglas to introduce African imagery and themes into his paintings. As Douglas developed this

individual style, he became the figure to which the Harlem Renaissance aspired to emulate.

Aaron Douglas received two Rosenwald Fellowships, one for study in France and the other to tour Haiti and the American South. He was also elected president of the Harlem Artists Guild in 1935 and worked to obtain WPA recognition and support for African-American artists.

In 1937, he founded and chaired the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained involved until 1966. Douglas died in Nashville in 1979. His work may be found in the collections of Fisk University, Nashville, TN; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco.

Photo: Aaron Douglas, African American Modernist, Susan Earle, Yale University Press, p. 92.

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JAMES DOZIER (20TH CENTURY) Cult of the Fish #7, n.d. lithograph 9 x 11 inches (image) 11 x 14 inches (sheet) signed and titled pencil signed and numbered 82/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter

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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 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 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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Masks with Lobe, 2004 color woodcut print 11 x 11-1/4 inches signed, titled, dated and inscribed, AP

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020)

The Force That Drives the Water Through the Rocks, 1965 oil on canvas 35 x 57 inches signed, dated, and titled

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020)

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MEL EDWARDS (B. 1937) Mel Edwards was born and raised in Houston, but was given a football scholarship to play at the University of Southern California. Upon arriving at the school, he abandoned sports and began studying art. Edwards’ work was born of conflict: the prevailing modern art movement was toward abstraction and the non-objective while he was a student, but he believed art had been made throughout history for a reason and to tell a story. He also faced pressure as an African American artist to present a narrative of racial status. His welded steel Lynch Fragments consolidated those disparate mindsets.

His compositions were balanced and pure, yet presented a narrative that was at once current and historical. Edwards found he could present similarly strong images in two-dimensional printmaking as well.

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Inside Out, 2008 serigraph 28 x 38 inches signed, titled, dated March 19, 2008, and numbered 14/16

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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.

Unveiled, 2002 charcoal on paper 10 x 12 inches signed

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Forgive Me Brother, 2000 oil on masonite 16 x 12 inches signed, titled, dated verso

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FRANK FRAZIER (B. 1943) Untitled, 2010 mixed media collage 12 x 10 inches initialed and dated Provenance: acquired directly from the artist at Longwood University (Farmville, Virginia); Private collection, Richmond, Virginia I’m concerned about the future of the Black artist; the lasting effect of our work on our own children. It’s important that we, as artists, make some statements to affect change.

Originally from Harlem, Frazier studied at the Art Students League and Hofstra University.

In 1980, he moved to Dallas and began working in silkscreen. He had hoped to make his art more affordable to people and make it easier to share his narrative. He uses swatches of vibrantly colored Kente cloth and figurines from Ghana and Upper Volta, as well as the Ashanti tribe. He has exhibited at Howard University; Martin Luther King, Jr Library, Dallas; and the Brooklyn Museum. (REF: Hearne Fine Art, Arkansas)

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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.

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Modernist Landscape, c.1940 watercolor on paper 12 1/'2 x 16 1/2 inches signed Provenance: Aaron Galleries, Glenview, IL

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REGINALD GAMMON (1921-2005) Gammon was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of the Industrial Arts (1941, 1946-1949) , Tyler School of Fine Art and Temple University (1950-1951). He also served in the U.S. Navy from 1944-1946.

Gammon was a figure painter first and foremost.

His early works, such as Alienation, The Scottsboro Boys, Harlem 66, Scottsboro Mothers, and Freedom Now (recently included in the exhibition Soul of a Nation, Art in the Age of Black Power) are powerful, somewhat angry images; the artist uses color sparingly to accentuate the message and lessen any decorative element. In fact, the 1965 exhibition of works by artists in the group Spiral (of which Gammon was a member), was titled, First Group Showing: Works in Black and White (1965).

Gammon exhibited at Brooklyn College (1968); Minneapolis Institute of Art (1968); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1970); Studio Museum in Harlem; Martha Jackson Gallery; Philadelphia Civic Center; Flint Institute of Art; Rhode Island School of Art; Everson Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; and the Atlanta University Annuals, among other venues.

Additional reading: African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis; African-American Art, Sharon F. Patton Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

Gammon was also a member of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, established by Benny Andrews and Cliff Joseph. He participated in the protest exhibition at Acts of Art Gallery, Rebuttal to the Whitney (1971), and had a solo show there in 1974.

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King Oliver and Satchmo, 2003 lithograph 14 1/2 x 20 inches (full margins) signed, titled and dated numbered 1/10

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REGINALD GAMMON (1921-2005)

Remembering, 2001 lithograph 30 x 21-1/4 inches (sheet and image) signed, titled, dated (7/2001) numbered 1/80

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REGINALD GAMMON (1921-2005)

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M SAFFELL GARDNER (20TH CENTURY) Untitled, 1989 monoprint 11 x 14 inches signed, dated, and numbered 44/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.)

Saffell Gardner earned his BFA and MFA from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He works in various media and has exhibited extensively. He was selected as the Chivas Regal Artist-in-Residence at the Charles H. Wright Museum in 2000, and a work of his is included in the permanent collection there. His work is also included in the collections of the Henry Ford Hospital and the Federal Reserve, Chicago.

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HERB GENTRY (1919-2003) 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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Yesterday, c.1987 serigraph 9 x 13 inches (image) 9 3/4 x 13 5/8 inches (sheet) signed and numbered 223/300 in pencil Printed by Bill Greitans, Atelje Arte in Malmo, Sweden.

Exhibited: 10 Americans: Some with Blue and Yellow Stripes, Landskrona Konsthall (summer of 1987), organized with Borstahusens Art Association.

Catalog note: Mary Anne Rose, artist and widow of Herbert Gentry, was gracious in helping BAA accurately describe this work. She tells us that along with Gentry and herself, other artists who participated in the exhibit were Bob Blackburn, Richard Mayhew and Emma Amos.

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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. Everevolving, 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

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

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Colors,2018 relief print 25 x 40 inches signed, titled, dated, BAT similar collages in monochromatic black hues. Re-invention has been a consistent component in Gilliam’s work throughout his career - he has constantly innovated, disrupted, and improvised and he is still doing all of it at age 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.

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933)

Untitled (Hard Edge Abstraction), c. 1963-1965 acrylic on thick, gessoed paper 18 1/2 x 18 inches signed Provenance: Andre “Mickey” Ferrell , studio assistant to the artist; to private collection, Los Angeles, California).

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933)

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933)

Untitled, 1979 watercolor and gouache on hand-torn paper 17 x 17 inches signed and dated

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933)

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JONATHAN GREEN (B. 1955) 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 Afro-American 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 https://youtu.be/BGUD8Rjvk7U

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First Sunday, 1995 color lithograph on Arches paper 18 3/4 x 18 inches signed and numbered edition 250 Published by Mojo Portfolio, New York

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CHERYL HANNA (B. 1951) Star of Inquiry, 1991 serigraph and collage 14 x 11 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 25/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper.

Hanna was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and studied at the Pratt Institute. She works as an illustrator of children’s books and favors the medium of collage. Her work has been exhibited at the Newark Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her collaboration with author Alexis de Veaux for the 1987 book, The Enchanted Hair Tale, won her a Coretta Scott King Award. She also illustrated a book about Selma Burke written by Garnet Jackson.

-From the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter

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JOHN WESLEY HARDRICK (1891-1968) John Hardrick was born in Indianapolis to Shepard and Georgia Etta (West) Hardrick in 1891. He showed a talent for art as a young boy, and his work was brought to the attention of the owner of a local art store and framer, Herman Lieber, who helped the boy enroll in children’s classes at the John Herron School of Art (interestingly, many of the frames one will find on his paintings today were made by Lieber and bear the label).

As a teenager, he began studying with important Hoosier Group impressionist painters, William Forsyth and Otto Stark. He worked at a foundry at night to put himself through John Herron (he executed a well known painting of this subject matter, illustrated in the catalog for the exhibition, A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans (Hardrick, Scott, Woodruff, and Majors), IMA, Warkel and Taylor, p. 59).

In 1914, he was married to Georgia Ann Howard and held his first exhibition, which was successful. He shared a studio on Indiana Avenue with Hale Woodruff for some of that year, but increased financial pressures caused him to stop painting, and take a job in his family’s trucking business.

When he resumed painting, he exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1927. One of his paintings, Little Brown Girl was purchased by a group of supportive black citizens and donated to the Herron Art Institute for their permanent collection. It currently hangs at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Hardrick’s landscapes are derived from the many trips he took to Brown County, about fifty miles from Indianapolis. He traveled to the area at the peak of the autumn season,

when the leaves were at the height of their color; during the summer when the sun was bright and hot; and in the winter when the ground was covered with snow. He did not sketch or paint during these visits .

Instead, the artist took in the different scenes and committed them to memory. (REF: A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans, IMA, Warkel and Taylor, p. 41).

He applied his paint very thickly, using a palette knife to create a tactile surface. He relied on a brush only to blend or add a shape, and use his thumb to mold the paint as if he were shaping a sculpture. (Ibid, p.

41) Hardrick worked quickly, beginning at the top of the canvas and working down.

He was more concerned with the atmosphere and expression of the landscape than the descriptive qualities, thus following in the tradition of earlier African American landscape painters, Bannister and Duncanson.

His landscapes were romanticized versions of his memories of his visits to the country.

He blended his own paint when possible, and has a very distinctive palette.

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Brown County, Indiana Landscape, c. 1935 oil on board 14 x 18 inches signed Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia

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VERNA HART (1961-2019) Perhaps I Dream Too Much, 1989 mixed media 13 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches signed and dated Verna Hart was born in Harlem, and studied at the Cooper Union School of Visual Arts (BFA, 1984); Pratt Institute and Bank Street College (double Master’s degrees, 1991).

Photo: Romare Heart

Hart is an expressionist painter, utilizing bravura brushwork and vivd colors in her depiction of people, especially jazz subjects. One of Hart’s most important projects was Jammin’ Under the El, a commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (New York City). Located at the Myrtle Avenue Station, it consisted of stained glass windows on the platforms’ sign structures as well as the station house depicting various painted scenes relating to music. Hart taught at Medgar Evers College, and moved to Wilmington, Delaware around 1999 to obtain specialized medical treatment for one of her children. Hart’s artwork has appeared in Spike Lee’s 1990 film, Mo’ Better Blues.

REF: Black New York Artists of the 20th Century, Selections from the Schomburg Collections.

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PALMER HAYDEN (1890-1973) The Red Barn, c. 1940 oil on board 18 x 12 inches signed 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 African-American folklore and contemporary scenes of Harlem. Hayden continued to live and work in New York until his death in 1973.

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PALMER HAYDEN (1890-1973)

Vaugirard, c. 1930 watercolor on paper 21 x 14 1/2 inches signed and titled label from Miriam A. Hayden Collection verso, #618 Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia

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PALMER HAYDEN (1890-1973)

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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.”

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Banana Plant Leaf #2, 1979 watercolor and pencil on paper 22 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches signed, signed titled and dated verso

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AL HINTON (20TH CENTURY) The Sacrifice of the Artist, 1990 collage and lithograph 11 x 14 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 60/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper.

joined the Canadian Football League, playing there for 8 years. Hinton originally intended to work as a commercial artist and his career began with figurative subjects; over time, he moved toward abstraction and began working in collage and assemblage.

Photo: Ann Arbor News, January 22, 1978

-from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Al Hinton was born in Columbus, Georgia.

He earned his BA from the University of Iowa and his MFA from the University of Cincinnati (1970). He also taught at the University of Michigan from 1975-2007. Hinton was a successful athlete, playing football in high school and college. He was drafted by the Dallas Texans (AFL) in 1962, but decided to move to Mexico instead and work on his art—but soon changed his mind again, and

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ROBIN HOLDER (B. 1952) They Damaged Us More Than Katrina, 2006 color serigraph 26-1/4 x 18-7/8 inches (image) 30 x 22 inches (full sheet) published by Raven Fine Art Editions, Curlee Raven Holton, master printer signed, titled, numbered 54/70 Robin Holder was the child of an African American father and Russian Jewish mother born in Chicago and raised in New York City since the age of 7.

Being an African American Jewish female is automatic grounds for marginalization in this country. However, I decided that the role of victim was unacceptable. While studying at the High School of Music and Art I realized I could be creative instead of reactive. I decided art making could be a constructive vehicle of experimentation, exploration, communication and courage!

Robin Holder Holder’s unique approach to printmaking is her use of stenciling and layering, creating imagery, which similarly to life, is rich with meaning and complexity.

African American Art Since 1950, Perspectives from the Driskell Center, 2012, p. 69

In addition to the High School of Music and Art (NYC), she studied at the Art Students League (1969-71) and the Printmaking Workshop in Amsterdam. From 1977-1986, she worked as a coordinator at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop (NYC).

This print is part of a larger series titled, Warrior Women Wizards: Mystical Magical Series, which began in 1985 and continued for more than two decades. In 2006, she began a residency at Curlee Raven Holden's Experimental Printmaking Institute, where she executed this work. The disastrous effects of the hurricane and the inadequate governmental response inspired this subject, but typically, the artist addresses multiple issues within the scope of a single work. In times of tragedy, the inequalities which exist everyday are amplified.

Photo: Gumbo Ya Ya, Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, 1995, Midmarch Arts Press, NY; p.

107

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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010) Varnette Honeywood is an artist who celebrates black lifestyles in America with images rich in African references...

Honeywood’s primary concern is to illustrate the strong, reassuring, and free expressions of proud Black people.

For Honeywood, this goes far beyond depicting the icons of African American history to her own community. She is documenting a secular historical record of everyday African American life.

“Who else”, says Honeywood, “is going to interpret or document these feelings.. and who else is going to deal with our triumphs and our sufferings if it is not us?”

-Curtis James, Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, 1995, p. 110.

Varnette Honeywood was born in Los Angeles and studied at Spelman College and USC. She visited Africa in 1977, when

her work was exhibited at FESTAC. She met Bill and Camille Cosby in the 1980s, and a reproduction of one of her works was chosen to hang in the living room set on The Cosby Show. Honeywood was a prolific printmaker as well as painter.

REF: Forever Free: Art by African-American Women 1862-1980, Center for the Visual Arts Gallery, Illinois State University, 1981; St James Guide to Black Artists, editor Thomas Riggs, 1997, pp. 251-252.

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African Women, 1982 color screenprint 16 34 x 31 inches signed, titled, and dated in pencil

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HUMBERT HOWARD (1905-1990) Untitled (Still Life), 1969 pastel on masonite 31 x 24 inches signed and dated Philadelphia native, Humbert Howard, attended Howard University from 1932 to 1934, studying under James A. Porter. He also attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1937. Howard continued to sharpen his craft by working with the WPA, and later studied art at the Barnes Foundation from 1956 to 1961.

By 1950, he became known as the “dean” of black artists in Philadelphia. He served as the promotional chairman of the exhibition committee of Philadelphia’s Pyramid Club from 1940-1958. The Pyramid Club, founded in 1937, was a social club for black Philadelphians.

Howard’s own work was influenced by post-impressionist and cubist modes.

He exhibited extensively, showing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1950, 1952, and 1953, with a one-man show in 1951; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1954; the Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1958 (one-man); the Philadelphia Sketch Club; the Philadelphia Pyramid Club (one-man); Temple University; the Free Public Library of Philadelphia; Howard University (one-man); the William Penn Memorial Museum, 1970 and 1977; and the International Academy of Arts and Letters in 1970, where he won a Silver Medal.

The artist’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including: the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and Howard University.

A similar example may be seen in Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, Thompson, Brenda, and Maurine Akua McDaniel, David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, 2009.

Photo: Black Artists on Art, v. 2, Lewis/ Waddy.

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This photo is from the exhibition catalog for JUBILEE: Afro-American Artists on Afro-America, which was held at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in cooperation with the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, November 14, 1975-January 4, 1976. Many of the artists here are represented in this auction.

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GEORGE HUNT (1933-2020) Praise the Lord, c. 2000 acrylic and collage on canvas 30 x 24 inches signed and titled George Hunt was born in rural Louisiana, near Lake Charles, and spent his childhood in Texas and Hot Springs, Arkansas. He attended the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff and did graduate studies at University of Memphis and New York University.

Hunt spent 30 years teaching at George Washington Carver High School in Memphis before dedicating all his time to painting. He was honored for his painting America Cares/ Little Rock Nine. Originally commissioned for Central High School Museum, the painting hung in the White House for five years during the Clinton Administration. Hillary Clinton wrote Hunt saying, “we are grateful that our visitors and staff had such a powerful image of hope and freedom to greet, inspire, and inform them.”

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ARNOLD HURLEY (B. 1944) Still Life, 1964 oil on canvas 15 x 29 inches signed and dated Hurley earned a MFA from Tufts University, and received a Ford Foundation grant in 1964 to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A native of Boston, Mr. Hurley taught painting for 12 years at several area colleges and museums including Emerson College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Fitchburg Art Museum, Lowell University, Milton Academy, Boston Public Schools and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He currently teaches art at Crossland High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Mr. Hurley’s approach to painting involves a realistic or representational style and his works vary from still life drawings to portraiture.

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CLIFFORD JACKSON (B. 1927) Nobody Knows, 1982 drypoint etching on paper 11 1/4 x 9 3/4 inches (image) signed, titled and dated, with “imp.” in pencil (l.r.)

“E.A. Toornål” (l.l.)

“E.A.” is epreuves d’artiste, or artist’s proof, and “Toornål” is the Swedish term for drypoint. The notation, “imp” (l.r.) indicates the artist printed it himself.

Clifford Jackson was a visual artist and jazz musician. Like many of his contemporaries, such as Walter Williams, Harold Cousins, Harvey Cropper, Larry Potter, Sam Middleton, Herb Gentry, and Earl B. Miller, he chose to work in Scandinavia, rather than lose opportunities due to racial inequalities in the United States. He studied at the Royal Academy in Stockholm and his work is in the collection of the Sundsvall Museum, Sweden. Jackson’s work was included in the 1964 exhibition 10 American Negro Artists Living and Working in Europe in Copenhagen.

Catalog note: BAA is grateful for the help from Josephine Rydeng of Obro Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark in cataloging this lot.

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LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905-1998) The Bridge, 1938 watercolor and graphite on paper 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches signed, titled, and dated also signed and titled verso “The Bridge, Venice, Italy” Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia Lois Mailou Jones’ career spanned seven decades, and her paintings represented a variety of artistic techniques and themes as her style evolved. Her work remained consistent in her thoughtful use of color and strong sense of design, both of which were instilled in her through her extensive education at institutions such as the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Boston Normal Art School, and the Designer’s Art School of Boston.

At the beginning of her career, Jones submitted textile designs through a white classmate that were used by major textile firms. She went to work at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina, helping to establish an art department. Professor James Herring was so impressed with her work, that he asked her to join the faculty at Howard University.

Jones held a position here for the next 47 years. A number of her students went on to have extremely successful careers in art, including Elizabeth Catlett and David Driskell.

In 1937, Jones went to Paris for a years sabbatical. She attended the Academie Julian and began painting plein air. She

would continue to return to Paris throughout her life; like other African American artists of the time, she felt a freedom there that was profound.

Jones found another spiritual home in Haiti.

In 1954, she was invited to visit and paint the country’s landscape and the people.

The works she produced in this period are her most widely known works. Jones was equally at home painting French landscapes and figure studies. Her work is found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Metropolitan Museum, NY; and the National Palace, Haiti.

The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, organized the exhibition Lois Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color in 2011. In 2013, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston held a show of 30 paintings and drawings showing her versatility and mastery of techinique. Her work was also included in the exhibition, I, Too, Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100, held at the Columbus Museum of Art, OH, in 2018.

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NAPOLEON JONES-HENDERSON (B. 1943) Mysterioso (Beshma Swing), 1984 Hand-painted stencil silkscreen with oil based inks printed on Fabino paper 16 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches (image) 22 x 32 inches (sheet) Signed, titled, and dated Provenance: private collection, Los Angeles, CA Jones-Henderson's work is currently featured in an expansive retrospective exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Napoleon Jones-Henderson: I Am As I Am-A Man, February 15-July 24, 2022.

BAA is grateful for the assistance of the artist in cataloging this work.

Jones-Henderson was born in Chicago, and studied at the Sorbonne Student Continuum-Student and Artists Center in Paris (1963). When he returned to the U.S., he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1971). He also became involved in Africobra as one of the earliest members (1969).

Jones-Henderson explored various mediums in his artwork. His work is included in the collections of the DuSable Museum of African American History, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, South Side Community Art Center, Hampton University Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Photo: Chris Cardoza

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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 firstever solo museum exhibition opened at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago.

Jones-Hogu was at the center of the black arts scene in 1960s Chicago. As a member of the Visual Artists Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), she helped paint the Wall of Respect on Chicago’s South Side in 1967. Paying tribute to more than 50 African American figures, the project is regarded as the first collective street mural in the United States. It revived the mural movement in neighborhoods across the nation, black ones in particular. Jones-Hogu later wrote that the Wall of Respect “became a visual symbol of Black nationalism and liberation.”

In 1968, the year after contributing to the legendary mural, Jones-Hogu helped cofound AfriCOBRA, an artist collective with Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004), Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, and Gerald Williams.

(Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarrell were active in OBAC, too.) Initially called COBRA, then African COBRA, the group settled on the name AfriCOBRA, which stands for African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists. The collective focused on positive,

powerful, and uplifting images of black people.

The group held regular meetings in Jarrell’s studio and established a set of principles and a collective aesthetic. Their visual themes included syncopated, rhythmic repetition; balance between abstraction and absolute likeness; bright harmonious colors; and active lettering, which was JonesHogu’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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Untitled, c. 1969 screenprint on paper 26 x 26 inches unsigned, a signed certificate from the artist accompanies the lot This is a unique proof

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BARBARA JONES-HOGU (1938-2017)

Getting the Game Together, 1967 woodcut on paper from an edition of less than 10, printed by the artist signed and titled in pencil Provenance: the artist, gifted to her brother, William Jones

BARBARA JONES-HOGU (1938-2017)

CLIFF JOSEPH (1922-2020) Untitled, Revolutionary, 1972 oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches signed and dated Illustrated: Cliff Joseph, Artist and Activist, Thom Pegg, p. 68-69.

Provenance: the artist to private collection, Kansas City, MO. The original title of this work is unknown and it is not documented specifically (by title) in an exhibition listing, but there is a remnant of a tag and thumbtack on the stretcher verso, which is typical procedure for identifying a work that is included in an exhibition (the tag affixed to the work corresponds to a written receipt retained by the artist).

The subject sits erect and he faces the viewer directly, but the work is slowly tragic and sad. The possibility of the death of the young man, whether he is fighting for a cause he believes in, or if he is enlisted to fight for a cause he does not support, is tragic.

Once again, the palette is unique and highly limited by the artist: red, black, and green; a muted sun and a denim jacket are the only deviances. Here, the young rebel is confronted by the possibility of his own death.

Many of Joseph’s work feature a red sky, but this one in particular evokes a sense of time, specifically that a conclusion is at hand.

The symbols rising from the earth denote Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but instead of offering any reassurance to the young man, they mark the head of the grave like a tombstone.

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JAMES DEWITT KING (B. 1941) Two Figures, 1992 bronze sculpture 18 1/2 inches (h) marble base, additional 4 inch cube; on a wooden, irregular-shaped base signed, dated, numbered, 2/30 (on bronze) Sculptor/designer James DeWitt King was born in Chicago in 1941. As a teenager, he met artist Margaret Burroughs and became a regular visitor at her house which gave him the opportunity to meet and talk to artists of every medium. King was taking sculpture classes at the Art Institute every Saturday as well.

He went on to major in architecture at Chicago’s Dunbar Vocational High School and after graduation went to Germany and Vienna. When he returned to Chicago, he met Richard Hunt and began to visit him at his studio.

This experience of watching Richard work, rekindled my desire to become a sculptor.

Later in my career it was his criticism that aided my growth.

In 1969 he moved to Detroit and received a commission from the Detroit Institute of Arts for an environmental play structure which was installed at the Merrill Palmer School. His work was also presented at the Pontiac Black Cultural Center, Oakland, MI along with fellow artists Lester Johnson and Charles McGee; the Detroit Artists Market (Seven Black Artists), and a traveling exhibition organized by the Illinois Arts Council (Black American Artists, 71.)

He continued to make sculpture- working in steel and aluminum and later fiberglass and cardboard mixed with earth and color.

King created a series of sculptures titled The Great Black Man. He completed commissions for private individuals including Mrs. Esther Gordy Edwards, of Motown Fame.

“The Family as Dynasty”, depicted the saga of the Gordy family.

REF: Black Art: An International Quarterly, v. 2, no. 4, James King’s Sculptural Exterior Forms, Jacqueline King, 1978.

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JONATHAN M. KNIGHT (B. 1959) Cardinal Haven, c. 2000 watercolor on paper 11 x 11 1/2 inches (image) signed and inscribed, KWS (Kansas Watercolor Society) also signed and titled on artist's label verso Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO Jonathan Knight was born in Daytona Beach, Florida and studied at the Art Institute of Ft Lauderdale (BFA). He also studied etching and printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute. Knight worked for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. His subjects include portraits, landscapes and still lifes. His work is in the collections of the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Hallmark Fine Art Collections, Anheuser Busch Corporate Collection, Museum of African American Art, Miami, and the Camille O. And William H. Cosby, Jr. Collection.

His work has been exhibited extensively and been illustrated in numerous art magazines.

He is a long-standing member of numerous watercolor societies across the country, including the American Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society. He exhibited in Black Romantic at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2002.

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JONATHAN M. KNIGHT (B. 1959)

Canyon Road View, 2002 oil on board 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches 17 x 19 inches (as framed) signed Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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JONATHAN M. KNIGHT (B. 1959)

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COLUMBUS KNOX (1923-1999) The Banjo Player, n.d. oil on canvas 44 x 32 inches signed 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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BENI E. KOSH (1917-1993) Railyard, c. 1955 watercolor on paper 12 x 9 inches unsigned, estate stamp, "Beni Kosh" verso, with Landscape, c. 1955 gouache on board 8 x 12 inches unsigned, estate stamp, "Beni Kosh" verso.

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.

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)

In the 1960’s, he legally changed his name to Beni E. Kosh or “Son Of Ethiopia”. He

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ARTIS LANE (B.1927) Emerging Man, n.d. bronze sculpture 21 x 14 x 6 inches (sculpture) 2-1/4 x 9 x 6 inches (height) 23-1/4 inches (total height) signed Whether she is creating purely figurative work that represents the universality of man, or portraits of such luminaries as Jacqueline Kennedy and Nelson Mandela, painter, sculptor, and educator Artis Lane has always been concerned with portraying enduring spiritual truths.

Most recently she completed a bust of Sojourner Truth which has been installed in Emancipation Hall and is part of the collection of the U.S. Capitol. Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, remarked that she was a perfect choice to sculpt Truth because, “her family- her personal story-is so compelling, and in some ways she embodies the history of black Americans.”

Lane was born Artis Shreve in 1927 in North Buxton, an all black village in Ontario, Canada. She is a direct descendant of abolitionist Mary Ann Shad Cary, who founded a school and the newspaper, The Provincial Freedom.

One of her earliest memories is of recreating dolls out of clay she found in a stream on her grandmother’s property.

She was painting portraits by age 6, and at 16, she received the Canadian Portraiture Award as well as the Edith

Chapman Scholarship to the Ontario College of Art. Lane moved on to the Cranbrook Art Academy, and while in Detroit, had the opportunity to paint many of the important business and political leaders at the time, including Governor George Romney, Mayor Colman Young and several Ford family members.

Lane worked and lived in New York City, Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico City before settling down more permanently in Los Angeles. Throughout her career she created portraits, explored social injustice, and the metaphysical - examining both the individual and mankind as a whole. She writes, “In my work, I strive to heal, uplift, and inspire viewers and collectors to find perfection in their own being.” She has created portraits of such luminaries as Nelson Mandela, Michael Jordan, and Oprah Winfrey. Her bronze portrait of Rosa Parks was the first work of an African American woman to be exhibited at the

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ARTIS LANE (B.1927)

National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. In 1999, she designed the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to Ms. Parks. Lane was inspired by this to further her artistic vision into the realm of the metaphysical with a series of works that explored mankind’s spiritual evolution, the culmination of which has been the creation of a 12 foot bronze sculpture called, Emerging Man. Her work has been featured in major group and individual exhibitions, including Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana; Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; DuSable Museum, Chicago, Illinois; and the Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles, California. In 2007 a major retrospective of Lane’s work was held at the California African American Museum which spanned 60 years.

Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

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ARTIS LANE (B.1927)

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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 rediscovered 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 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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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)

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)

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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000)

Douglass, 1999 color silkscreen on Rising Two Ply rag paper, through hand-cut film stencils 26 1/8 x 18 inches (image) 32 1/8 x 23 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated and numbered Published by the National Association of Black Journalists, Adelphi, MD; printed by Workshop, Inc., Lou Stovall, Master printer.

Nesbett 99-2

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CLIFFORD LEE (1928-1985) Soprano Saxophone Player, c. 1970 oil on canvas 9 1/2 x 20 inches signed

Clifford Lee was a social-realist artist working in Chicago during the 1950s and 60s. He studied at the Grand Rapids Gallery (MI) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He worked primarily with a palette knife and his subject matter consisted of jazz musicians. Lee’s paintings were shown at the Englewood Concourse Commission (supported by the South Side Community Art Center and the Du Sable Museum of African American History), and the Hyde Park, Gold Coast and Lake Meadows Art Fairs. His work also appeared in Ebony magazine.

Lee is included in Theresa Dickason Cederholm’s, Afro-American Artists, the 1974 Ebony Handbook and Falk’s Who’s Who in American Art.

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CLIFFORD LEE (1928-1985)

Trumpet Player, c. 1970 oil on canvas 18 x 19 inches signed

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CLIFFORD LEE (1928-1985)

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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 (196365), 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 LeeSmith: Meditations.

Photo: Joseph Kleineman, Hughie Lee-Smith signing Nocturne, 1995

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Nocturne, 1995 lithograph 26 x 36 inches signed and numbered 5/175 Published by Mojo Portfolio

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SAMELLA LEWIS (B. 1924) Over the course of a distinguished multifaceted career, artist, art historian, museum curator, and activist, Samella Sanders Lewis became a peerless advocate for African American involvement in the arts. While she works in a variety of media, Lewis is best known as a printmaker. Often utilizing the human figure, her oeuvre speaks to the struggle and strength of the African American community.

Lewis began her education in her hometown of New Orleans, at Dillard University, but on the advice of her professor, Elizabeth Catlett, she transferred to Hampton University. After graduating, she taught at several universities and in 1968, Lewis became the education coordinator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a position she hoped to use to increase exhibition opportunities for black artists. Repeated clashes with museum administrators over the hiring of more staff of African descent led Lewis to resign. She would go on to establish three independent art galleries and, in 1976, founded the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles, where she served as senior curator until 1986.

Soon after she left LACMA, Lewis began teaching at Scripps College in Claremont,

California (1969–1984), and, in another first, became the college’s first tenured African American professor. When she and fellow artist-scholar Ruth Waddy sought to publish their landmark two-volume guide on African American artists, Black Artists on Art (1969 and 1971), Lewis co-founded Contemporary Crafts Gallery, the first African American– owned art publishing house.

She also founded the noted academic journal, International Review of African American Art, in 1976.

REF: The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC. Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

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Guitar Player, 1995 colored pencil drawing on Arches watercolor paper 20 x 27 1/2 inches (image) 22 3/4 x 29 1/2 inches (sheet) signed and dated 7/95 in pencil

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SAMELLA LEWIS (B. 1924)

Portrait of a Woman, c. 1955-60 conté crayon and charcoal 22 x 17 inches Dedicated, From Sammy to my good friend and mentor, Tom Feelings

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SAMELLA LEWIS (B. 1924)

Cane Field, 1949 color screen print with gouache on paper 14 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches signed, titled and dated in pencil Provenance: private collection, New York, NY This image is an extremely rare and early print by the artist.

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SAMELLA LEWIS (B. 1924)

Stimulant 2, 2007 color screenprint 22-1/4 x 17 inches (image) 28 x 22 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered AP 6/12 Printed by, Lou Stovall, Master Printer blind stamp

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SAMELLA LEWIS (B. 1924)

The Farmer, 2006 serigraph 40 x 22 inches signed, numbered, titled, blind stamp , edition of 60

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AL LOVING (1935-2005) Al Loving was born in Detroit. His father was the first black teacher in Detroit’s public high schools and Loving, Sr. went on to become a professor and dean at the University of Michigan.

Loving, Jr. studied first at Wayne State University and Flint Junior College (now Mott Community College), then the University of Illinois (BFA, 1963) and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MFA). Shortly after graduation, Loving moved to New York, and lived at the Hotel Chelsea (1968). He is the first African American artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1969).

Unlike many African-American artists whose art focused on the racial politics of the era, Loving was a staunch abstractionist. His early works were built upon strict yet simple geometric shapes—often hexagonal or cubic modules. Inspired by Hans Hoffmann (who taught Loving’s mentor Al Mullen), Loving concentrated on the tension between flatness and spatial illusionism. In the 1970s the artist became disenchanted with his earlier, hard-edge 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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Untitled (Spiral), c. 2004 acrylic collage 7 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches signed and dated verso, with #35 Provenance: private collection, New York, NY

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AL LOVING (1935-2005)

Erotic Series, c. 2002 watercolor on paper 8 x 9 1/2 inches initialed

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AL LOVING (1935-2005)

Kerhonkson, NY, c. 2000 photo/acrylic collage 6 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches signed and titled verso Provenance: the artist to private collection, New York, NY

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PERCY MARTIN (B. 1943) Untitled, c. 1970 woodcut 20 x 12-1/2 inches (image) 24 x 18 inches (sheet) signed, AP Martin was born in Danville, Virginia, and he has lived in Washington, DC since 1947. He is principally a printmaker. Martin studied at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. Martin’s work was included in The Washington Show (1985) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, illus., p. 86. He has added to an ongoing series of print works which detail the life, culture, and history of an imaginary Bushmen people born out of his imagination.

He taught at the Sidwell Friends School (Wash DC) from 1979-2009. He was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship in 1966 and in 1975, a National Endowment for the Arts artist-in-residence award. His work is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Renwick Gallery).

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ROBERT MARTIN (20th century) Untitled, n.d. watercolor on Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper 14 x 11 inches signed numbered 34/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter)

His work is in the permanent collections of the following: Birmingham Museum of Art, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Florida A&M University, Huntsville Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Universidad Federal Da Bahia, Museu Afro-Brasileiro, Salvador-BA, South America University of Montevallo, University of Wisconsin, Memorial Union, Madison, WI, Warwick Museum, Warwick, RI.

Martin received his BS from Florida A&M University and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin. He also taught art at Wayne State University in Detroit and California State University, Los Angeles. Martin works as a composer, motion graphics designer and visual artist.

Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

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DINDGA MCCANNON (B. 1947) Waiting, 1981 block print and collage on rice paper 20 x 16 inches signed, titled, dated Provenance: private collection, New York, NY Dindga McCannon is a Harlem artist working in virtually every medium of interest to her. As a young girl, McCannon’s mother pressed her to pursue an education in fashion design rather than fine art. In the early to mid-1960s, while teaching arts and crafts to children for the Red Cross, her supervisor suggested she contact a group of professional artists known as the 20th Century Art Creators (now known as the Weusi Artists).

In 1966, she exhibited with the Art Creators in the First Annual Harlem Outdoor Show.

She met Faith Ringgold in 1970, and contributed to several murals. In 1971, she was a founding member of the Where We At, Black Women Artists, Inc., which was a showcase for black women artists. This group was reacting to neglect from black male artists and white feminist artists. McCannon, Ringgold, Kay Brown and several others organized an exhibition in 1971 at the Acts of Art Gallery, the Greenwich Village gallery directed by Nigel L. Jackson, who also hosted the Rebuttal To Whitney Museum Exhibition the same year. McCannon also had a solo exhibition there earlier that year.

McCannon’s work was included in two recent exhibitions paying homage to these early shows: Acts of Art and Rebuttal in 1971, Hunter College Art Galleries and We Wanted a Revolution, Black Radical Women 1965-85, Brooklyn Museum.

McCannon opened a boutique on the Lower East Side in the 1960s, making and selling African-inspired clothing and jewelry. She later began incorporating her skills with fabric design in her fine art, adding elements of collage to paintings, as seen in this work, Festival in Harlem. Early in her career, she did some informal work at Robert Blackburn”s Printmaking Workshop and later studied privately with Charles Alston, Richard Mayhew, and Al Hollingsworth.

Her work, Day in the Life of a Black Woman Artist (1978) is in the collection of the Schomburg Center (see: Black Artists the 20th Century, Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections, p. 50.)

Further Reading: Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African American Women Artists, King-Hammond, 1995.

McCannon’s work, Revolutionary Sister, 1971 is now on view in the exhibition Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection at the Brooklyn Museum.

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CHARLES MCGEE (1924-2021) Portrait of a Man, c. 1960 charcoal and graphite on paper 12 x 9 inches signed 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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SAM MIDDLETON (1927-2015) Mixed media artist, Sam Middleton was one of a group of expatriate African Americans who enjoyed success in Europe in the 1960’s. Middleton was born in New York City and grew up in Harlem near the Savoy Ballroom. This notable venue provided much inspiration for his future collages. His love of music - classical and jazz - was integral to his very life - he was known to carry an unwieldy turntable and collection of records with him wherever he traveled.

He joined the Merchant Marines in 1944. Upon his return to New York City in the 1950s, he relocated to Greenwich Village, meeting and befriending a small group of African American artists including Walter Williams, Clifford Jackson, Harvey Cropper, and Herb Gentry - all of whom would expatriate to Europe in the next decade In the early 1950s, Middleton was part of New York’s Cedar Tavern scene, which included his friends Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Kline encouraged Middleton to apply to the John Hay Whitney Foundation and advised him to seek artistic success outside New York.

Middleton received a scholarship for one year of study at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, otherwise he was largely self-taught. It was there in 1957, that he began experimenting with collage.

His work was shown at Contemporary Arts Gallery in 1958 and again in 1960. The Whitney Museum of American Art showed four of his works in Young America 1960: Thirty American Painters Under 36.

Between 1959 and 1961, Middleton lived in Europe, exhibiting in Spain, Sweden, and Denmark.

Much of his artistic material was gleaned from

ephemera he collected as he moved from city to city.

In 1962 he decided to make a home in the Netherlands. His later work brought the Dutch landscape into his collages.

Middleton remained in the Netherlands for the rest of his life. He showed extensively there and other locales throughout Europe, but was not forgotten in the States. In 1970, his work was shown in the exhibition, Afro-American Artists Abroad at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin and in 1983, the Studio Museum in Harlem held the exhibition An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad which also included Herb Gentry, Cliff Jackson, and Walter Williams.

His work is found in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL; Fisk University, Nashville, TN; Brooklyn Museum, NY, as well as many others.

Photo: Middleton, Cliff Jackson, and Harvey Cropper in Stockholm, Sweden, 1960; Sam Middleton Estate. Unidentified photographer; © Sam Middleton Estate

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Tradewinds, 1963 watercolor and gouache on paper 8 x 30 inches signed, titled and dated

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LEV T. MILLS (1938-2021) Known primarily as a printmaker, Mills grew up in Florida, and studied at Florida A&M University. He earned his MA and MFA at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At Wisconsin, he studied with Dean Meeker, an accomplished printmaker himself. Mills’ subjects approach a social narrative, but he likes to leave room for interpretation. He places precedence on artistic issues and this is evident in the high level of craftsmanship in his work. The images are bold, but subtle— not heavy-handed. Mills studied abroad at the Slade School of Art in London on a fellowship. He participated in exhibits throughout Africa with the United States Information Agency program. Mills returned to the U.S. to Atlanta, to teach printmaking at Clark College, and later Spelman College. In the late 1960s-70s, Mills’ work consisted primarily of intaglios and silkscreen prints.

I am greatly influenced by the discovery of new materials that might be used to produce a work of art. It is necessary to define these components that make art meaningful as new media are produced.

The ongoing effort of a “structuralist” is to struggle with forms—to build up, modify, tear down, and build up again before the resolution of a given work finally does take place.

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

-Lev T. Mills

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Out Loud-Silent, 1969 intaglio in sepia tone on cream wove paper 17 3/4 x 23 3/4 inches (image) 22 x 28 inches (sheet) signed, dated, titled and numbered, 13/50 Provenance: the estate of the artist.

A remarkable image that has never been offered at auction previously.

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DEAN MITCHELL (B. 1957 ) Dean Mitchell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1957 and raised in Florida.

He attended Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio, working his way through by selling his watercolors. After graduation, Mitchell worked at Hallmark Cards until he decided to paint full time.

Although he initially found it difficult to find gallery representation, he has since won numerous awards and had his work exhibited extensively. He is well known for his figurative works, landscapes, and still lifes that evoke Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. His inclusion in the 2002 exhibition, Black Romantic, at the Studio Museum in Harlem led Michael Kimmelman, art critic of the New York Times to call his works, “subtly tuned character studies with an eye toward abstract form and charismatic light. Mr. Mitchell is a virtual modern-day Vermeer of ordinary black people given dignity through the eloquence of his concentration and touch.”

Mitchell is primarily focused on capturing his immediate surroundings and conveying a sense of intimacy between the viewer and his subject. He has felt especially drawn to the city of New Orleans, where he has painted the city streets and the musicians that populate them.

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Edward, The Gentleman, 2004 watercolor on Arches paper 2 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches (17 x 19 inches as framed) signed and dated Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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DEAN MITCHELL (B. 1957 )

Antiques, 2006 watercolor on Arches paper 5 x 8 1/2 inches (image) 10 1/4 x 13 1/2 (as framed) signed and dated; label verso with title TCC 2008 Exhibition Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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DEAN MITCHELL (B. 1957 )

Jazz Trumpeter, 2002 etching 11 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches (image) signed and dated, AP Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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DEAN MITCHELL (B. 1957 )

Thirsty Roots, 2001 watercolor on paper 10 x 15 inches (image) 21 x 25 1/4 inches (as framed) signed, dated and titled; inscribed AWS (American Watercolor Association) Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (B.1933 ) Evangeline Juliet, “EJ” Montgomery was born in New York. Her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a homemaker. As a teenager, she discovered her affinity for creating art when she received a paint set as a gift. Montgomery graduated from Seward High School in New York City. In 1955, she moved to Los Angeles with her husband and studied at the Los Angeles City College (1955-58) and Cal Sate, Los Angeles (195862). Montgomery lived in Nigeria from 19621965. 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).

work in enamel and successfully executed works of her own in that medium.

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

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.

Crop Over, 1994 color lithograph 12 x 8 inches (image) 14 x 11 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 82/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter)

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (B.1933 )

Merry-Go-Round, 2007 serigraph 30 x 23 1/4 inches signed, dated, titled and numbered, 4/5

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CASSI NAMODA (B.1988 ) Godfather, 2018 archival pigment print 18 x 14 inches accompanied by a signed document by the artist (C.O.A.) edition 42/50 Namoda was born in Mozambique in 1988.

She now divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. Namoda first studied cinematography in San Francisco, but after her first gallery show of paintings in 2017, she has focused primarily on that medium.

Namoda’s subject matter comes from her extensive travels as a young person, as well as the narrative of social dynamics and racial identity in post-colonial Mozambique. Other influences on her work are photography and fashion, and she recently collaborated with Vogue Italia.

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WOODROW NASH (B. 1948) Mother and Child, c. 2000 ceramic sculpture 9 x 9 1/2 inches signed Nash was born in Akron, Ohio and grew up in a black inner city neighborhood. He became interested in art and earned jobs locally as a self-taught illustrator. In 1975, he left for New York City to work as a fashion illustrator; he also was designing album covers for jazz labels, and finally, was earning himself a degree in commercial art from the Pels School of Art in NYC (established by well known mid-20th century painter, Albert Pels).

He graduated in 1977 and worked for about 10 years as a freelance illustrator before returning to Ohio to work for the Goodyear Aerospace Corporation as a technical illustrator, and even a stint at American Greetings Corporation. In 1991, he moved again to Madison, Wisconsin to work as a graphic artist. By this time in his career, Nash had experienced more and more integration of computers and electronic imaging in his job. While armed with a vast array of technical skills, Nash believed he was losing touch with the true essence of what art was all about—so he went in the opposite direction, and devoted his energy to sculpting. His technique and subject matter was now based in history and people: Africa and world tribal culture. He calls his version of raku (or pit-fired) glazes “African Nouveau”.

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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 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”). 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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Sand and Foam, 1997 bronze with blue-green patina 11 x 5-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches (sculpture) 5 x 7 x 1 inches (base) signed, dated and numbered 2/5

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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.

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.

Pajaud was appointed as an art director

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Sophisticated Lady, 2000 watercolor on paper 6 x 4 1/2 inches signed; titled and dated on label verso: Stella Jones Gallery Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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CHARLY PALMER (B. 1960) Two Sisters, c.2000 acrylic on canvas 14 x 11 inches signed label verso from Stella Jones Gallery Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO Palmer was born in Alabama, but raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He moved to nearby Chicago to study at the American Academy of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is foremost a portrait painter, but he incorporates landscape, flowers, and even geometric abstraction into his compositions, and he works mostly with acrylic paint.

In July of 2020, Palmer’s work was featured on TIME Magazine’s cover. The artist says, “In my 60 years on this earth, so much has changed; however all too much has remained the same.”

Palmer also provided the cover art for John Legend’s latest album, Bigger Love, a poster for the 1996 Olympics, and commissions marking the 150th anniversaries of both Fisk and Howard Universities. He most

recently taught illustration and design at Spelman College. His work is included in the collections of Atlanta Life Insurance, McDonald’s Corporation, Miller Brewing Company, Coca-Cola Company and Vanderbilt University.

Recently, the exhibition, Departure, Charly Palmer, was held at the Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, GA, in 2021, and featured ...a 30-year range of Palmer’s style including recent paintings that move between realism and abstraction, lending a universality to his images of Black experience.

-Felicia Feaster, Charly Palmer retrospective highlights the artist’s versatility, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photo Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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GORDON PARKS (1913-2006) Untitled (Back to Fort Scott), 1950 gelatin silver print 12 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches (image) signed on verso Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO This is one of a series of images taken for the photo essay, Back to Fort Scott in 1950. The original works were featured in an exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA in 2016; Wichita Art Museum, KS, 2016; and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA, 2015.

From the website of the Gordon Parks Foundation Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott focuses on a little-known photo essay about school segregation undertaken by Gordon Parks in 1950 for LIFE. Because it never appeared in the pages of the magazine, few are aware of this landmark story, which brought Parks back to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, more than twenty years since he left as a teenager and moved north to Minnesota after the death of his mother. The issue of segregated education was regularly in the news during the years leading up to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954),

and the state of Kansas was at the center of that debate. “Back to Fort Scott” was one of the earliest civil rights assignments given to Parks after he became LIFE’s first African American staff photographer, and it inspired him to revisit his own childhood and search for his classmates from the all-black Plaza School. Taking these striking portraits of his friends and their families as they recounted their life stories to him also motivated Parks to explore his own youthful memories of poverty and discrimination in his semi-autobiographical novel and film The Learning Tree.

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JAMES PHILLIPS (B. 1945) Macombo, 1983 acrylic on canvas (unstretched) 20 1/2 x 8 inches signed and titled James Phillips graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art and was associated with the AfriCobra and Weusi groups in the late 1960s. In New York, he became acquainted with several popular jazz musicians, who inspired him to mimic the rhythms and moods within the music in his own art.

Taliza Fleming writes of a work by Phillips: As evidenced in his 1966 painting The Dealer, Phillips began to incorporate jarring color combinations, sporadic zigzagging forms, and writhing compositions that alter the perception of reality. In similar fashion to the musical free jazz style of John Coltrane—an artist with whom Phillips was acquainted— The Dealer displays striking features of improvisation, layered rhythmic patterning, and violent bursts of colorful forms and accent.

Narratives of African American Art and Identity, The David C. Driskell Collection, p. 130 Phillips was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (1971-72). He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; Howard University; American Center, Tokyo; and The Children’s Museum,

New York as a solo artist; and in group shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Kenkeleba House, NYC; and the Selma Burke Center, Pittsburgh. His work is included in the collections of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State office, NY; Hall of Justice, San Francisco, Fisk University Museum; Howard University; and the Schomburg Center, NY. It was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that Phillips’ paintings became architectonic and grid based. In these hard-edged geometric compositions, his African signs and symbols remain intact, and his painting style and technique are more calculated. The grids on the painting are obvious. At first glance shapes and patterns that are arranged asymmetrically appear to be random and non-repeating, but further examination reveals a deliberate, conscious, and wellbalanced configuration.

Regina Holden Jennings, St. James Guide to Black Artists

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Macombo, 1983 acrylic on canvas (unstretched) 20 1/2 x 8 inches signed and titled

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AARON IBN PORI PITTS (B. 1942) Road to Revolution III, 1967 woodcut, reprinted with hand-coloring in 1991 11 x 14 inches signed and dated This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art.

Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Pitts was a revolutionary artist-activist born in Detroit . He worked for the US Post Office and was a member and plant leader of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

He was a co-founder of the National Conference of Artists Michigan Chapter and an Artist-in-Residence for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

He was a publisher of Black Graphics International and a founding member of PitchBlack Poetry (PitchBlack Arts Institute).

His visual art employs collage, print-making and assemblage, and incorporates African symbols. He is especially inspired by Ogun, the Yoruba deity presiding over iron, war, and hunting. Pitts was also a dedicated videographer and documented countless concerts, lectures—any significant cultural or spiritual event in and around Detroit for decades.

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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984) Prentice Polk was born in Bessemer, Alabama. He studied photography at the Tuskegee Institute (1916-1920) with C.M. Battey and apprenticed with Fred Jensen in Chicago, Illinois (1922-1926). Jensen charged Polk $2.50 an hour and Polk was making $5.00 a day. Polk went door to door soliciting commissions for pictures of the neighborhood kids. That was a rough job during the Chicago winters, so he returned to Tuskegee in 1927 and opened his first studio. A year later he was hired to the faculty at Tuskegee Institute, and from 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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The Pipe Smoker, 1932/1976 gelatin silver print 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 inches (image) 10 x 8 inches (sheet) signed and inscribed in pen by the artist, "Romelia, your uncle-son, P.H. Polk, 4-7-76" This image was taken in 1932 and printed by the artist in 1976.

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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984)

The Boss, 1932/1976 gelatin silver print 10 x 8 inches signed and inscribed in pen by the artist, "Romelia, your uncle-son, P.H. Polk, 4-7-76" This image was taken in 1932 and printed by the artist in 1976.

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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984)

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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984)

Paul Robeson, 1932/1976 gelatin silver print 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 inches (image) 10 x 8 inches (sheet) signed and inscribed in pen by the artist, "Romelia, your uncle-son, P.H. Polk, 4-7-76" This image was taken in 1932 and printed by the artist in 1976.

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PRENTICE HERMAN POLK (1898-1984)

George Moore, 1930/1976 gelatin silver print 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 inches (image) 10 x 8 inches (sheet) signed and inscribed in pen by the artist, "Romelia, your uncle-son, P.H. Polk, 4-7-76" This image was taken in 1932 and printed by the artist in 1976.

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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, lot of four 2007 letterpress poster on heavy cardstock 4 works, various sizes, 19 x 14 1/4 inches (3); No Dancing is 14 1/4 x 22 inches signed in pen by the artist Literature: The Bad Air Smelled of Roses: Letterpress Posters by Carl Pope, Thom Pegg, Tyler Fine Art, 2014.

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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 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. (continued)

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Vision at Ibadan, 1963 pastel on board 16 x 28 3/4 inches signed; artist’s label verso with title and date Provenance: the estate of Adelaide Cromwell (1919-2019; distinguished professor at Boston University)

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JAMES AMOS PORTER (1905-1970)

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. 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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JAMES AMOS PORTER (1905-1970)

Reclining Nude, 1963 charcoal on tan paper 11 x 17 1/2 inches signed and dated, "10-63"

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LONNIE POWELL (B. 1941) Harriet, 2008 oil on artist board 40 x 30 inches signed and dated Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO Lonnie Powell graduated from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he studied with James Dallas Parks. Powell excels in both watercolor and oil, and he has exhibited extensively, especially in his home state of Missouri. His artwork is included in the collections of Sprint Corporation, H & R Block Corporation, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Kansas City Chiefs Arrowhead Art Collection, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the Mulvane Art Museum.

His work was included in the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum’s traveling exhibit, Shades of Greatness. He is a Signature Member of the National Watercolor Society.

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LONNIE POWELL (B. 1941)

Saad, c. 2002 watercolor on paper 6 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches (image) 16 1/2 x 20 1/2 (as framed) signed and dated, 8/22/02 Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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LONNIE POWELL (B. 1941)

Cecilia’s Back, 2008 watercolor on paper 5 1/4 x 7 3/8 inches (image) 14 1/2 x 15 1/2 (as framed) signed and dated 04/06/08 on label verso Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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NATHANIEL MARY QUINN (B. 1977) Untitled, 2007 oil, watercolor and pastel mixed media on paper in four parts 84 x 76 inches, 90-1/2 x 82-1/2 inches (as framed) Each sheet signed, dated and dedicated verso Quinn was born on the south side of Chicago, Robert Taylor Holmes. As a ninth grader at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, his mother died, and he later legally adopted her name, Mary, as his middle name so it would appear on his degree. When he returned home from school a month later, his family home was empty and his father and brother, Charles were gone and were never seen again. Determined to overcome his hardships, Quinn focused on his studies.

He eventually graduated from New York University and lived in Brooklyn.

In 2013, his collage-inspired painting, titled after his brother, Charles, was seen by the director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (Brooklyn) who exhibited it there. Quickly gaining international exposure, Quinn held his first

solo show at Pace Gallery, London, in 2014. Five years later he was represented

by Gagosian. Quinn utilizes imagery from personal experiences and found sources.

He combines collage with paint, oil stick, gouache and pastel. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, MOCA, Art Institute of Chicago and the Hammer Museum.

Photo Credit: Taylor Dafoe

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ROBERT JAMES REED, Jr (1938-2015) Plum Nellie, c. 1975 acrylic on paper 10 x 14 inches signed and dedicated in pencil recto; lengthy inscription verso in pencil “To Judy and John”, Warmly, Bob. Reed referred to his body of work in the 1970s as “Plum Nellie”, and explains that the use of symbolic color as a reaction to his Interaction of Color experience, in which color is a character and landscape. He writes on the verso, “Enclosed is a little Plum Nellie to start the New Year”.

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, JR (1934-2002) Dominoes #3, Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, 1981 color screenprint 33 x 20 7/8 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 7/77 Los Angeles native John Riddle became known initially for his politically charged works that combined welded steel and debris left from the WATTS riots in 1965 the purpose for which was to expose the harsh conditions that African Americans lived and labored in South Central L.A. Later in his career, after moving to Atlanta, Georgia, he began to work on low relief assemblages, prints and paintings, which, with their solid color, angular shapes recalled the work of Jacob Lawrence and allowed viewers a glimpse of African American culture.

Riddle earned his Associate’s degree from Los Angeles City College, and then served in the US Air Force from 1953-1957. After leaving the military, he was able to earn his BA from California State University, Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1966.

He continued there to earn his MFA in 1973.

Like his mentor Noah Purifoy... Riddle was deeply affected by the physical aftermath of the [Watts] riots and created assemblage works from the torched metal junk that was piled everywhere.

register that Riddle found in the wreckage, picked apart down to its barest skeleton, and then mounted on metal legs that he had scavenged from a junkyard. Although its parts betray a pained history, the sculpture possesses a lyricism of form that clearly draws from early twentieth-century abstraction in its emphasis on line and geometry.

- Andrea Gyorody, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, p. 212.

Catalog accompanying the exhibition at The Getty, 2011 Riddle’s work, Gradual Troop Withdrawal (1970)l, was included in Soul of a Nation Art in the Age of Black Power (the leg of the exhibit at The Broad).

His work may be found in the collections of the Oakland Museum, High Museum of Art, and the California African American Museum.

His sculpture Ghetto Merchant (1966) was pieced together from a destroyed cash

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, JR (1934-2002)

Fairbank's or Garvey?, 1979 color screenprint 23 15/16 x 34 inches signed, titled, and dated numbered 6/50

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, JR (1934-2002)

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JOHN ROZELLE (B. 1944) A native of St. Louis, Missouri, John Rozelle is a prolific painter and collagist. Rozelle attended Washington University, St. Louis, where he received a BFA, and Fontbonne College, where he received a MFA. He 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 PostDispatch

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Sag Harbor Series #36, 1990 acrylic and torn paper collage 20 x 28 inches signed, titled and dated Provenance: private collection, Los Angeles, CA

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BILL SANDERS (20TH CENTURY) Form, n.d. photo lithograph 10 x 8 inches (image) 14 x 11 inches signed and numbered 34/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Sanders was born in Memphis, TN, and earned a BFA, MA, and MFA from Wayne State University in Detroit. He has won numerous awards for his photography, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Art, African American Museum of Art (Los Angeles), I.B.M., Inc., Edsel and Shirley Woodson Reid. He has exhibited at the DIA Foundation, New York , Wayne State University, and the Detroit Institute of Art.

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JOHN T. SCOTT (1940-2007) Shango’s Necklace, 1984 kinetic sculpture: painted brass, steel and wood on flagstone base 19 x 10 x 5.75 inches (including base) faintly signed and dated on base.

Scott was born in New Orleans, LA, and studied at Xavier University, New Orleans, (BFA, 1962) and then Michigan State University (MFA, 1965). He became a professor of art at his alma mater, Xavier, after completing graduate school.

John T. Scott’s abstract sculptures of painted steel and aluminum use tension—formal, technical, and conceptual—as the structuring principle behind works that, while derived from the uniqueness of the artist’s New Orleans-based African American cultural experience, convey universal resonance through the suggestion of ritual.

Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

—St James Guide to Black Artists, Nicole Gilpin, p. 474

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CHARLES SEBREE (1914-1985) Saltimbanque, c.1950 pigment and wax on board 10 x 8 inches signed Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO 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)

Saltimbanque, c. 1960 pigment and wax on masonite 18 x 15 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.

Photo: Miami Herald, Feb 21, 1959, p. 29.

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.

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Deep Water, c. 1935 oil on board 14 x 18 inches signed Provenance: Private collection, Richmond, Virginia

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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 African-American 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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Welcome to Strange Times, 2004 lot of two objects: woodblock print on paper 51 x 36 inches (sheet) signed and dated, with AP 1 with the printer's block, 51 x 36 inches each object framed Provenance: the estate of the artist to private collection, Cincinnati, OH

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CARL N. SIDLE (contemporary) Gordon’s The Learning Tree, 2004 gelatin silverprint 15 1/2 x 20 inches signed and dated edition of 25

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DWIGHT SMITH (contemporary) Responses, Patterns, Masks, 1994 lithograph and mixed media 14 x 11 inches signed, dated, and numbered 59/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) The Importance of Being Arty With Dwight Smith

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DWIGHT SMITH (CONTEMPORARY)

The Afternoon of My Adinkra Summer, 1986 watercolor collage 30 x 22 inches signed and dated; signed, titled and dated verso

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FRANK SMITH (B. 1935) Untitled, 1991 acrylic on paper 14 x 11 inches signed, dated, and numbered 28/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Frank Smith grew up in Chicago and studied at the University of Illinois (BFA, 1958) and at Howard University (MFA, 1972). Smith is part of a family of musicians, his brother being part of Max Roach’s all-percussion ensemble, M’Boom. As a visual artist, music highly influenced his work, and he was enamored with the work of Wassily Kandinsky, whose art was also deeply influenced by music. Smith moved to New York in 1967, and exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1969. In 1970, he met the members of Africobra during their exhibition at the Studio Museum. Jeff Donaldson had become the head of the art department at Howard University, and when Smith completed his MFA he joined the faculty there. He joined Africobra in 1973.

Frank Smith takes a different approach to the music theme. Instead of painting pic-

tures of musicians performing, Smith interprets the music as he hears it using a panoply of sound wave lines and colors...

Smith says he has gone through three phases of visual expression. First, he made visual statements with the human figure; next he combined the figurative with the non-figurative into semiabstracts…In the third and current state he had cast off all reliance on figurative forms and evolved a totally interpretative style.

Africobra The First Twenty Years, Nubia Kai, 1990, Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA, p. 11 Smith retired from Howard in 2001 after having taught there for 31 years. His mixed media fabric collage, Banner for a New Black Nation (1978) was recently included in the Brooklyn Museum’s leg of Soul of a Nation Art in the Age of Black Power. The work is in the permanent collection of the museum.

Smith’s work, Black and Tan Fantasy is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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SHINIQUE SMITH (B. 1971) Transmute Bale (Bale Variant n. 0014), 2007 clothing, binding, wood, latex, and enamel 30 1/2 x 32 x 30 inches C.O.A. from Moti Hasson Gallery, New York accompanies the work. The artist exhibited at Moti Hasson Gallery in New York, November 15, 2007.

PROVENANCE Moti Hasson Gallery, New York Private Collection, Milan Private Collection, San Francisco Smith was born in Baltimore, MD. Her mother was a fashion editor, so her exposure to art and design was piqued at an early age. She was interested in the Baltimore graffiti scene and Japanese calligraphy before entering college and earning her BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He first efforts after school were in Seattle, and in the realm of film.

She returned to her studies, earning a MA from Tufts University and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2003).

Upon graduation, she moved to New York.

Much of her work as a sculptor employs the repurposing of clothing, textiles, even stuffed animals. This idea began when she read an article about thrift stores shipping secondhand garments to Africa. Her work first gained critical attention when the Studio Museum of Harlem exhibited her first bale sculpture in Frequency (2005), an exhibition which included artists such as Nick Cave and Hank Willis Thomas. Her work was also featured in the exhibition, 30 Americans (Rubell Family Collection, 2008-2009).

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GILDA SNOWDEN (1954-2014) Tornado, 1991 mixed media 14 x 11 inches signed, dated, and numbered 14/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Snowden was born and grew up in Detroit and studied art at Wayne State University.

Early in her career she made mixed media assemblages, but soon turned to direct painting.

Her signature image became the tornado, depicted in a vividly colorful, abstract style. “Snowden’s whirlwinds dynamically delivered to paper in sensuous black, red, purple and blue pastel, seem to kick up a multicolored dust that fills the interstices of the drawing. They are like dancing dervishes, suggestive of the recklessness of life and the unpredictability of nature.

When adapted to portraiture, the tornado image turns into a ponytailed profile with no lessening of that supercharged touch.

Gumbo Ya-Ya, King-Hammond, p. 267.

Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

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NELSON STEVENS (B. 1938) Nelson Steven’s career has spanned over 5 decades and a multitude of media and style, yet has remained consistently grounded in the black experience and his exuberant celebration of color. He began his career painting murals on the walls of jazz clubs in the 1950’s. Stevens received his B.F.A. from Ohio University in 1962, then moved to Cleveland in 1963, where he taught in the public school system and at the Karamu House.

By 1969, he had completed his M.F.A. at Kent State University. Stevens recalled during this period he had to convince his teachers and fellow classmates that Black art, as defined by friend and Black Arts scholar and playwright Larry Neal, existed as its own entity - an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America - an aesthetic equivalent to the Black Power movement. Prior to the movement, there was no literature to back up Black art as an absolute genre. Murals like the Wall of Respect, painted in 1967

by William “Bill” Walker and other members of the Organization of Black American Culture helped change that. Stevens, now a professor at Northern Illinois University, joined the newly formed art collective AFRICOBRA in 1969, along with Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Jeff Donaldson, Barbara

Jones-Hogu, and Gerald Williams and exhibited widely with them.

In addition to his work in the visual arts, Stevens produced the Black culture magazine, Drum at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he was a professor for over 30 years.

Stevens’ work may be found in many private and public collections, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY; and the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is now being shown in the exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which originated at Tate Modern in London, UK. He currently lives and works in Maryland. In 2019, Stevens work was featured in the solo exhibition, Work from the 60’s to the Present held at Kravets Wehby Gallery, NY.

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Self Portrait, c. 1970 woodblock print 9 x 12 inches pencil signed, titled, and numbered 2/7 Artist’s Proof

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ALLEN STRINGFELLOW (1923-2004) Happy Hour, c. 2000 mixed media collage on paper 10 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches signed and titled Allen Stringfellow was born in Champaign, Illinois, the son of a nightclub singer and jazz guitarist. As a teenager, he designed costumes for his father’s colleagues and painted religious murals for local churches.

He was an artist who came of age in the Depression, learning his craft at the University of Illinois and at the Art Institute in Milwaukee. He taught printmaking classes at the South Side Community Art Center.

Stringfellow and William Carter, a WPA artist who became his best friend, veered away from social realism. “I wanted to be an artist without a clenched fist in the air,” he says. “I thought being a black artist would be labeling myself, and besides, I was never mad.”

Stringfellow painted pleasant watercolors, exhibiting them at art fairs on the South Side.

To make ends meet, he silk-screened store displays for an ad agency. For five years in the 1960s, he ran his own gallery, Walls of Art, where he promoted the artwork of major African American artists, as well as himself.

Stringfellow went to work at Armand Lee in the late 1960s, one of Chicago’s foremost custom framers and restorers of fine art. This kind of work sparked his interest in creating works on paper and collage. His work often includes religious and jazz imagery, and is included in the permanent collections of Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Champaign; the Chicago Historical Society, DuSable Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

REF: Website of Africanah.Org: Arena for Contemporary African, African-American and Caribbean Art. Text from Essie Green Gallery, New York.

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FREDDIE STYLES (B. 1944) Styles is an Atlanta-based abstract painter, who credits his rural upbringing as influential on his work. He believes a rural lifestyle creates a deep connection—a sensitivity-between the land and the people owing their existence to it. He graduated from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, and served as artist-in-residence at several institutions, including Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College.

He has exhibited at the High Museum, Atlanta; Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah; City Gallery East, Atlanta; African American Abstraction; American Embassies in Sierra Leone, Trinidad & Tobago and South Africa, 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, HartsfieldJackson 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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Black and Yellow, 2016-2017 acrylic on gessoed paper 26 x 40 inches signed

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FREDDIE STYLES (B. 1944)

New Collage Series-Winter, 2017 #2, 2017 collage on gessoed rag paper 26 x 40 inches signed

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FREDDIE STYLES (B. 1944)

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SHARON E. SUTTON (B. 1941) Charity is Not Puffed Up, 1990 Lithograph 12 x 9 inches (image) 14 x 11 inches Signed, titled, dated 9/90, and numbered 19/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

“This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art.

Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber “neutral pH” archival paper.” (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Sutton was born in Cincinnati, and was initially interested in music. As a small girl, she became interested in learning piano because African American children were not allowed to go to the swimming pool, ice rink or movie theater. She took lessons from the organist at her mother’s church.

In 1963, she earned a degree in music and became a professional musician in New York City, playing on Broadway and at Radio City Music Hall.

She went back to school in 1967, studying at the Parsons School of Design and Columbia University, and earning her master’s degree in Architecture in 1973. She was the 12th African American woman to be licensed to practice architecture (1976). She also earned a PhD in psychology from the City University of New York.

Sutton became interested in the visual arts, especially collage and printmaking, and her work is part of the Robert Blackburn Collection at the Library of Congress. Dedicated to improving the living environments of disenfranchised populations, Sutton is currently ethnographic consultant to design studio instructors at Parsons School of Design. Most of Sutton’s scholarship explores America’s continuing struggle for racial justice.

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ANN TANKSLEY (B. 1934) 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.”

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).

Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists , KingHammond, 1995

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Woman is Heaven, c. 1980 mixed media, hand-colored print with collage 39 x 26 1/2 inches signed in the image, titled verso

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ANN TANKSLEY (B. 1934)

Apartheid, 1986 oil on canvas 24 x 30 inches signed and dated

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ANN TANKSLEY (B. 1934)

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EVITA TEZENO (B. 1960) Evita Tezeno is a Dallas-based collagist and sculptor. Tezeno’s collage works are made from colorful, patterned hand-painted paper swatches and found objects gathered in baskets around her studio. She says her greatest influences are Romare Bearden, W.H. Johnson, and Elizabeth Catlett (Tezeno was awarded the Elizabeth Catlett Award for The New Power Generation).

Her compositions depict harmonious everyday scenes of people and places. She has shown her work at the Thelma Harris Gallery (Oakland), Stella Jones Gallery (New Orleans) and Peg Alston Gallery (New York) in the last five years. She also exhibited last year (2021) at Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles.

Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including that of the African American Museum, Dallas, the Embassy of the Republic of Madagascar , Denzel Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson.

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Down Low, c. 1995 mixed media collage 14 1/2 x 37 1/2 inches (image) 27 x 48 inches (as framed) signed and titled Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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EVITA TEZENO (B. 1960)

Simple Pleasure, 1999 mixed media collage 18 x 18 inches (image) 27 x 27 inches (as framed) signed, dated and titled Provenance: prominent private collection, Kansas City, MO

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EVITA TEZENO (B. 1960)

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WILLIAM TOLLIVER (1951-2000) Natural Beauty, c. 1990 lithograph 36 x 22-1/2 inches (image) 39-1/2 x 26-1/2 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and numbered 232/350 Tolliver was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

He was one of 14 children. His father was a carpenter and his mother worked all day in the cotton fields. Tolliver was interested in art as a young boy, but there was no curriculum in the public schools he attended to support this interest, He bought inexpensive watercolor sets at the dime store . When he was 13, he discovered the work of another self-taught painter, Vincent Van Gogh.

“Van Gogh painted purely for the love of it,” Tolliver explained in The International Review of African American Art (vol. 7, No. 3, article by John Hart, p. 17-23).

Tolliver dropped out of school at the age of 14 and left Mississippi for Los Angeles, and joined the Job Corps program there, learning carpentry and reading skills. He also received limited instruction in painting.

He then moved to Milwaukee for awhile, working as an assistant to a local sculptor, before returning to Vicksburg to take a job in construction. He was married in 1977, and did his best to paint in the evenings.

In 1981, Tolliver moved to Lafayette, Louisiana to work in construction, but

always painting at night. His wife, Debrah, encouraged him to show his work to a gallery, but William felt it wasn’t good enough and refused. Debrah decided to do it herself, showing the work to Bob Crutchfield, a local gallerist. Crutchfield sold 9 paintings in 10 days and requested more.

Tolliver frequently painted blues and jazz musicians. Crutchfield moved to the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1989, opening the Galerie Royale, and representing Tolliver’s work. His clients include Sheri Belafonte, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Richard Pryor, Cecily Tyson, David Winfield and Ellis Marsalis.

REF: biography from Galerie Royale and Celebration of Life, Zigler Art Museum, Jennings, LA (1987)

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YVONNE TUCKER (B. 1941) Self Portrait With Vessel, 2001 watercolor and gouache on paper 14 x 11 inches signed Yvonne Edwards Tucker and dated numbered 55/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art. Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter Born in 1941, ceramicist Yvonne Tucker grew up in Chicago and initially thought of herself as a painter while taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and the South Side Community Center. She attended graduate school at the Otis Art Institute (now Parson’s School of Design) studying drawing with Charles White and ceramics with Helen Watson. She was particularly influenced by Peter Volkous, who developed the art ceramics department there and emphasized clay as art.

In 1967, she married Curtis Tucker and together they pursued their art both individually and in collaboration until his death in 1992. They experimented to create works which combined Japanese Raku techniques with traditional Native American, African, and African-American elements that they called Afro-Raku. She often incorporated painted figural elements to their work as well.

Tucker has exhibited at the Contemporary Gallery of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX; Alabama State University, Montgomery; Evan-Tibbs Gallery, Washington D.C.; and the Contemporary Art Center, Kansas City, MO. Her work may be found in the collections of Alabama State University, Montgomery; Fisk University, Nashville, TN; Syracuse University Afro American Ceramics Collection, NY; and the Evan-Tibbs Collection, Washington D.C.

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JAMES VANDERZEE (1886-1983) Nude (Harlem), 1923/1986 silver print 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches posthumous printing by the estate (blind stamp) notated by Donna VanDerZee in pencil verso and numbered, 72/250 James Van Derzee was a Harlem photographer whose studio approach contrasted the photojournalistic style of Gordon Parks and the social realism of Aaron Siskind. His success was largely based on his portraits of middle-class black families in Harlem, which sought to convey a sense of dignity and self assurance in the sitter. It has been said that the successful recipe for a Van Derzee image was equal part authentic pride of the sitter and equal part carefully constructed artifice—courtesy of the photographer.

In 1924, Van Derzee was commissioned as the official photographer of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). It was Van Derzee’s responsibility to not simply

document the activities of Garvey and the movement, but portray them in a strictly positive light. Van Derzee executed thousands of photographs of meetings and parades, some of which were made into a calendar.

His work is found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Williams College Museum of Art, MA; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, among others.

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RUTH WADDY (1909-2003) The Children, 1973 a set of seven linocuts on paper 16 x 12 inches (each) each signed, dated “5-1973”, inscribed Comprising each of the seven days of the week “Monday’s child is fair of face ... and the child that’s born on he Sabbath Day is bonny and blythe and good and gay,” with an eighth image of all seven days on one sheet, and signed and inscribed by the artist.

Provenance: the artist to a private collection, Los Angeles, CA Ruth Waddy was living in Chicago in the 1940s, and after being denied a job as a solderer because of her race, she left the Midwest and moved to Los Angeles. She worked odd jobs, including that of a riveter for Douglas Aircraft Corp. and an intake clerk at LA County Hospital (coincidentally with Noah Purifoy).

She took a ceramics class that sparked her interest and then took classes at Otis Institute and LA City College. She quickly became an adept printmaker, with the linocut being her medium of choice.

Waddy exhibited widely in the U.S., and

traveled as part of a delegation of eight artists to the Soviet Union in 1966, carrying her prints as well as 20 prints created by other black California artists (this was on the advice from Charles White).

Waddy achieved a great deal of success with her own work, but above all, she considered herself and advocate and organizer of art made by African Americans.

She founded the group Art West Associated in 1962 to press mainstream arts institutions in Southern California for greater African American representation.

In 2011, her work was included in the exhibition, Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Photo: Gumbo YaYa: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, 305.

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JAMES LESESNE WELLS (1902-1993) Wells was greatly influenced by African sculptural forms and the work of the German Expressionists, in particular Albrect Durer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller, and Emile Nolde; Cubists, and the Fauves. He worked in a variety of media at this time, although printmaking was a favorite. He created block prints for the publications Survey Graphic, Opportunity, and Plays and Pageants of Negro Life. HIs work was included in an exhibition of International Modernists in April 1929 at the New Art Circle Gallery owned by J.B. Neumann. Wells was the recipient of a Harmon Foundation Gold Medal in 1931 for his painting, Flight Into Egypt, and in 1933 won a first prize at the Harmon Foundation for a woodcut titled Escape of the Spies from Canaan.

He received a position at Howard University in the crafts department - teaching clay modeling, ceramics, sculpture, metal , and block printing.

Wells spent two years making a case to move his position and linoleum printing to the College of Fine Arts. The print as an art form, did not yet garner much respect. It was considered a lesser art form to painting and sculpting, but Wells appreciated it for its accessibility.

During the Depression, Wells served as the director of what was to become the Harlem Community Art Center, teaching classes for children and adults. Palmer Hayden and Georgette Seabrooke were his assistants. At this time, he dedicated

himself entirely to printmaking. Wells continued to hone his technical ability by working with Frank Nankivell and spent a year working in Stanley Hayter’s Atelier 17, then the most innovative center of etching and printmaking in the nation.

Wells continued to paint and create prints throughout the rest of his career. In 1961, the Smithsonian Institution held a solo exhibition of his prints, and another solo exhibition was held at Fisk University in 1973. The Washington Project for the Arts presented an exhibition of his oils and prints in 1986. The show was also presented at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Photo: New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Merry-Go-Round, 1950 woodcut 10 1/8 x 14 inches (image) 12 x 18 inches (sheet) signed, dated, titled, and numbered, 10/25 This print is identical to Carousel (1949) which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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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Jessica, 1969 etching and plate tone in brown on cream wove paper 11 1/4 x 23 3/4 inches signed and dated AP (edition of 25) Printed by Joseph and Hugo Mugnani, Los Angeles, CA

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JACK H. WHITE (B. 1940) Galactic Nascence #13, c.1980s acrylic and oxidized iron on wood 78 x 48 inches signed and titled verso White grew up in New York and studied at the New School for Social Research and the Art Students League (recipient of the Allen B. Tucker Memorial Scholarship). He exhibited at Ruder and Finn, NYC, Contemporary Black Artists (1969); Afro-American Artists New York and Boston (1970); Lee Nordness Galleries, Twelve Afro-American Artists (1969, NYC); High Museum of Art, Minneapolis Museum of Art, Everson Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, San Francisco Museum of Art, and many other important venues. He worked as a sculptor or created mixed media works and even drawings related to sculpture.

A similar work to this example may be seen in Tradition Redefined, The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, p. 94.

Geometry, world religions, philosophy, alchemy and physics have informed and inspired White’s work. He is mostly concerned with the process of executing a work and often employs a mixture of plaster and both dry and wet pigments…

According to White, ‘With these two concepts in mind and a desire to work with black pigments and oxidized iron, I produced these frescoes, restating my interest in the dualities which most often engender creation.

White’s work is also featured in Directions in Afro-American Art (1974), Cornell University Museum of Art.

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JACK WHITTEN (1939-2018) Untitled, 1983 pastel and colored pencil on paper 19 x 19 inches signed and dated Jack Whitten was born in Bessemer, Alabama (southwest of Birmingham) and planned to become an army doctor, so he entered pre-medical studies at the Tuskegee Institute in 1957. He traveled to Montgomery, AL to hear Dr Martin Luther King, Jr speak during the Montgomery bus boycott, and became deeply moved by the vision of a changed America. His interests shifted in 1960, and he enrolled in the art program at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Shortly thereafter, he moved to New York City to study at the Cooper Union school. (BFA, 1964). His early work was influenced by NY artists Willem de Kooning and Romare Bearden, and later, Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence.

Whitten’s work was featured in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972, and was given a solo show there in 1974. In 1983, the year of this

work, he was given a 10-year retrospective exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Throughout his career, Whitten has moved between and combined a gestural abstraction and a technical process art, and in doing so, created his own personal expression. This work reveals that duality in form if not materials: the composition centers around a rigid linear structure, but moving in, out, and around that structure are colorful, whimsical marks that are unrestricted.

Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn, Jack Whitten, New York, 2017. © Anton Corbijn. Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.

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KEHINDE WILEY (B. 1977) St Francis of Adelaide, 2006 cast marble, dust and resin 12 x 10 x 5 1/2 inches signed, dated and numbered, 25/250 Published by Cerealart Multiples, Philadelphia original box included Wiley received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University in 2001 and has since exhibited internationally. He became an artist-inresidence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2002. His paintings and sculptures are included in numerous private and institutional collections. In 2018, Wiley painted Barack Obama’s presidential portrait. His works draw from the compositions of the Old Masters, with the subjects being replaced with people of color.

In St. Francis of Adelaide, Wiley places the black male youth in the guise of a Christian saint, creating a counter narrative of beauty, humanity, and strength that challenges racist stereotypes. This neoclassical-style bust was influenced by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s stained-glass window, Saint Francis of Adelaide, in the Chapel of Saint Ferdinand, Paris. The subject is reminiscent of a philosopher in Rafael’s “School of Athens”: the athletic young man holds a book, scepter, and replacing a wine jug, a cognac bottle.

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WALTER WILLIAMS (1920-1998) 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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Blossom, 1965 oil and sand on masonite 10 1/2 x 10 inches signed titled, dated and signed again verso

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WILLIAM T. WILLIAMS (B. 1942) Untitled, n.d. color lithograph 16 x 11-1/2 inches (full margins) signed, titled and numbered 116/160 blind stamp Williams was born in Cross Creek, North Carolina. He received his BFA from the Pratt Institute in 1966, and his MFA from Yale in 1968. With only one year out of graduate school, the Museum of Modern Art acquired one of his works. Williams and Mel Edwards began the artist-in-residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 1975, he was invited by Bob Blackburn to work with the Printmaking Workshop in New York. For the next 22 years, the two collaborated to produce many images. In 2005, Williams was invited to create a print at the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, and in 2006, he served as an artist-in-residence at Lafayette College and the Experimental Printmaking Institute, working with master printmaker, Curlee Raven Holton.

Photo: Nodeth Vang

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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980) Although Hale Woodruff had won several prestigious awards early in his career, it wasn’t until the 1930’s that his individual style began to take shape. His work shifted from provincial landscapes and figure studies to social realist scenes and stylized landscapes. In 1935, he experienced a career breakthrough when two of his woodcuts appeared in a major exhibition entitled, “An Art Commentary on Lynching” at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries in New York City.

In 1936, Woodruff received a grant that allowed him to assist Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. His work with Rivera and support from the Federal Arts Project compelled him to undertake his famous Amistad murals for Talladega College, Alabama, which were installed in 1939. Currently, these murals are touring the country as a part of the exhibition, Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talledega College. In addition to the murals, the exhibition also includes 40 additional works by Woodruff: smaller paintings, mural studies, and linocut prints that date from roughly the same period.

Later in his career, his work began to take on influence from the abstract expressionist

movement and included more African imagery. He completed large mural commissions for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles as well as for Atlanta University. In the mid 1960’s, Woodruff formed the group, Spiral, with Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, and Norman Lewis to explore their common cultural experiences as black artists . His last major exhibition in his lifetime, was presented by the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1979 . Woodruff’s work may be found in the collections of Atlanta University, Spelman College, New York University, the Library of Congress, and the Harmon Foundation.

Old Church, 1931-1946/1996 linoleum cut print on chine-collé 19 x 15 inches (sheet) notation in pencil, "HC" Both works offered here were originally executed by Woodruff as part of the Selections from the Atlanta Period (1931-1946) suite, these examples were printed in 1996 by Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, NY (blind stamp l.l.) Published by the artist's wife and estate (blind stamp, l.r.)

Similar examples are in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980)

Sunday Promenade, 1931-1946/1996 linoleum cut print on chine-collé 19 x 15 inches (sheet) notation in pencil, "HC"

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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980)

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ROOSEVELT “RIP” WOODS (1933-2001) Chicken Ain’t Got No Lips , n.d. color lithograph 12 x 8-1/2 inches (image) 14 x 11 inches (sheet) signed, titled, and numbered 88/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art.

Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter

Woods graduated from Arizona State University in 1958, and taught painting and printmaking there from 1965-1992. He was the first African American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum.

Woods confronted the issues black artists faced in America, where opportunities for inclusion in the mainstream are limited and polarized with humor, satire, and guilt. His work was included in Black Art Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in AfricanAmerican Art , at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1989.

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SHIRLEY WOODSON (B. 1936) Filament, Wanting, Memory, n.d. collage with lithograph and mixed media 11 x 14 inches signed and numbered 82/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art.

Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) There is a strong element of nostalgia in Woodson’s work; re-identification with origins is a significant current running through ethnic groups who have been separated from their ancestors and homeland. Woodson is a student of history and espouses that the hands of all the previous black artists of import can be seen in the work of the current black artist.

Woodson earned a BFA (1958) and MA (1965) from Wayne State University, and made her exhibition debut in 1960 at there

Detroit Institute of Arts. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally and her work is in numerous important private and public collections.

Woodson co-founded the Michigan chapter of the the National Conference of Artists (NCA) in 1974.

Woodson began working in collage (and assemblage) in 1992 for a project in which she collaborated with fellow Detroit artist, Gilda Snowden, called, Coast to Coast, A Women of Color National Artists Book Project. She used photo-based collage as a medium to explore her family’s history. She remarked, “Ancestry carries stories and sources of strength.”

Photo: Studios and Workspaces of Black American Artists, Dennis L. Forbes, 2008

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KENNETH YOUNG (1933-2017) Untitled, 1974 watercolor on paper 30 1/2 x 22 inches signed and dated 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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ELIZABETH YOUNGBLOOD (20TH CENTURY) Black on Black, n.d. lithograph 14 x 11 inches signed in the image numbered 25/100 This work was included in Voices, An Artists’ Book, 1994, portfolio of work from 23 African American Artists, produced and distributed exclusively by the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter.

"This book represents the collaborative effort by artists to celebrate the tradition of creativity and excellence and to provide continued support of African American art.

Each book is unique and contains an original work by each of the 23 artists. The artists have used Buckeye Ltd. edition print paper, a 100% cotton fiber "neutral pH" archival paper." (from the website of the National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter) Artist, educator, and designer, Elizabeth Youngblood was born and educated in Detroit. She earned her BFA from the University of Michigan and her MFA from

Cranbrook Academy of Art. She maintains a dual interest in making by hand and design for production; her choices in media include drawing, printmaking, ceramics, weaving and bookbinding. She has been on the faculty at the University of Michigan and SUNY, and designed for the New York Times.

Typically starting from a monochrome palette and the repeated graphical element of the line, she has utilized her dexterity with fiber, wire, ceramics, drawing, and paper to quietly produce a visually coherent body of work that has continued to evolve over a period of several decades.

Photo Credit: Stewart Shevin

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