Abstraction

Abstraction 12/02 Winter Signature Auction

BLACK ART AUCTION

Abstraction 12/02 Winter Signature Auction

Beauford DELANEY (1901-1979)

After Beauford Delaney established himself as an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, he moved to Paris in 1950, where he felt a new sense of freedom.

His style shifted from the figurative compositions of New York City life, to abstract expressionist studies of color and light, notably a vibrant, Van Gogh inspired yellow, which he believed to represent light, healing and redemption.

In 1956, he met Darthea Speyer, an American cultural attaché living in Paris. She organized a group exhibition of works which included Delaney at the American Cultural Center in 1966, as well as two solo exhibitions of his work at her gallery which was established in 1968. Delaney lived his remaining years in Paris, eventually being hospitalized for mental illness and dying in 1979.

In 2002, Richard J. Powell curated the show, Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow, which debuted at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Powell says this about Delaney in his essay for the exhibition catalogue: “Delaney’s career-long decision to enshrine himself, loved ones, and the art of painting itself in a succession of radiant, joyous, magnificent, and painfully alive shades of yellow attest to his work’s greater, post-Abstract Expressionist mission. … [He] sought in his work and throughout his entire life to experience that state of perfect bliss in nature and society, to reach that nearly unattainable note or apogée of emotional discernment in the arts, and to know that ecstatic feeling of ‘excessive and deliberate joy’ in life.”

REF: Powell, Richard J. Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow. High Museum of Art, 2002. untitled, 1957-1960 oil on canvas 31 x 25 inches signed

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Lucille “Malkia” ROBERTS (1927-2010)

"As a black artist and a black teacher, I have been gripped by the threads of an elemental and pervasive spirituality in the art of the so-called "Third World". As a black woman, I feel strongly about my painting as a thread in that tapestry. I see it as an instrument of nourishment and strength for black people. Not political propaganda, not "anti-art", but a source of positive imagery to negate subtle distorted stereotypes of the past, and to undergird our growing sense of identity, pride and direction." M.R. (Source: Galerie Myrtis) In Black Artists on Art, Lewis/Waddy, volume 1, p. 1., Roberts states, “Gripped by the concept of Negritude in Africa and in the United States, I cannot accept for myself the path of impersonal, purely intellectual expression. I must affirm the identity, dignity and beauty of Black people.”

In this work, Market Sun, the Black figure in the left foreground is surrounded by color and light. Roberts employs the element of abstraction to evoke an emotional, sensational response from the viewer, but does not fully abandon the figure. The synthesis links the figure with the feeling of warmth and light.

Roberts was born in Hyattville, Maryland (Washington, D.C.). She earned her B.A. at Howard and her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan. She completed postgraduate work at Catholic University (D.C.), Parsons School of Design (NYC) and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere (Paris), and studied with Hale Woodruff—an influence that is very evident in this work. Roberts taught alongside Alma Thomas at the Shaw Junior High School for 40 years.

She exhibited at the Society of Washington Artists; Smithsonian Institution; Hampton Institute; Smith-Mason Gallery; and the 1st World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal (1971).

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Market Sun, 1980 oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches signed

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Rodney McMILLIAN (b. 1969)

Rodney McMillian lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Known for his installations using found objects, he explores complex and loaded connections between history and contemporary culture, often exploring the home setting as part of a larger examination of the intersection of race, class, gender and socioeconomic policy. He uses symbols of domesticity to examine the myth of a universal, middle-class. A recuring format in his work is the rectangle as a ground, both vertical and horizontal. An early example of this format is Garden of Eden. Created on a plastic shower curtain, Garden of Eden has a background of messy pink and gray, with plants and flowers rising upward from the lower horizon edge. McMillian received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. He is also an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Orange County Museum of Art; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

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Garden of Eden, 2000 acrylic on plastic with elements of collaged enamel 50 x 66 inches signed, titled and dated verso

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Ed CLARK (1926-2019)

Ed Clark was born in New Orleans but moved to Chicago in early childhood.

He served in the US Air Force between 1944-46, and from 1947-1951, attended the Art Institute of Chicago on the G.I. Bill. He traveled to Paris in 1952, and continued his studies at the L’Academie de la Grande Chaumiere for two years. Clark found the style of education to be much more lax in Paris than at the AIC, but he found inspiration in acquaintances and unlimited access to great works of art. He was particularly influenced by the Russian-born painter, Nicolas de Stael, whose work Clark found to be somewhere between hard-edge and the gestural abstraction popular in post-war Paris. Clark’s work became increasingly abstract and he began working in a much larger format.

In 1953, he was included in an exhibition of American artists working in France at the Galerie Craven. He was the only African American represented.

He returned to New York in 1957 for a solo exhibition at the Brata Gallery in the East Village, and continued to show there through 1959, but with the emergence of Pop Art in the 60s, not much was happening for Clark in the US. He returned to Paris in 1966 for a one man show at Galerie Creuze. Since the 1960s, Clark began using a push broom to push the paint across the canvas lying on the floor.

Clark termed his broom method “the big sweep,” and he told the writer Quincy Troupe in 1997 that what it provided was “speed. Maybe it’s something psychological. It’s like cutting through everything. It’s also anger or something like it, to go through in a big sweep.” (REF: Russeth, Andrew. “Ed Clark, Key Postwar Artist Who Changed the Shape of Abstract Painting, Is Dead at 93.” ARTnews.Com, ARTnews.com, 2 Mar. 2023.)

Clark continued to work in his innovative method until his death, improvising and layering luminous colors in his studio. His estate is represented by Hauser & Wirth, NY.

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untitled, 1980 oil/acrylic on paper 38 x 50 inches signed and dated

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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.

In the 1950’s Middleton 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;

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Collage #84, 1957 oil, mixed media and collage on masonite 13 x 48-1/4 inches signed and dated; labels verso with the title and the artist’s NYC address, as well as “Collection of Eve-Maria Courie” This is an excellent early example of the artist’s work and reveals his cubist influences.

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Sam MIDDLETON (1927-2015)

untitled, 1997 mixed media 21-3/4 x 30-1/4 inches signed and dated

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Water Event, 1981 mixed media and collage 24-3/4 x 19 inches signed and dated

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Sam MIDDLETON (1927-2015)

untitled, 1972 22-3/4 x 17 inches lithograph signed, dated, and numbered 5/60

untitled, 1997 color lithograph 19-1/4 x 13-3/4 inches (image) 25-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches (sheet) signed, dated, with E/A

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L to R: untitled, 1999 color lithograph 21-1/2 x 31 inches (sheet) signed, dated, numbered 96/100 untitled, 1974 color lithograph 13-3/4 x 19-1/4 inches (image) 19-1/2 x 25-1/2 inches (sheet) signed, dated, numbered 50/60

untitled, 1997 mixed media 21-3/4 x 30-1/4 inches signed and dated Polder Spring Two, 1979 mixed media 19-3/4 x 28-3/4 inches signed and dated

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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.

His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including, Freddie Styles: Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue, Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, GA, 2006; FREDDIE STYLES: Studies in Black, White and Silver. Camille Love Gallery, 1998; FREDDIE STYLES: Roots, Pine Needles and Faxes, Harriet Tubman Museum, Macon, GA, 2012; in addition to group exhibitions at the ATLANTA (GA). Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia; High Museum of Art, GA; Hammonds House Museum, GA; Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, 2009; and African American Art: The Paul R. Jones Collection, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 1993.

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.

untitled, 1994 acrylic and mixed media on heavy gauge paper 26 x 40 inches signed and dated

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LDS Series, Red #2, 2020 acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches signed; signed, dated, titled, verso

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Sam GILLIAM (1933-2022)

Re-invention had been a consistent component in Sam Gilliam’s work- he constantly innovated, disrupted, and improvised and was still doing all of it until his death in 2022.

When 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, and soon after, his works became large, hard-edged abstractions. 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. By 1975, Gilliam began to create dynamic geometric collages influenced by Miles Davis and John Coltrane; and in 1977, he produced similar collages in monochromatic black hues.

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Did You Swing, 1985 acrylic on canvas with aluminum 55 x 67 inches signed, titled and dated verso Labels verso: Monique Knowlton Gallery, Inc. 153 Mercer Street, New York, NY and Davis McClain Gallery 2627 Colquitt, Houston, TX

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Sam GILLIAM (1933-2022)

Composition, 1972 color screenprint, on Chine applique, printed to the edges on three sides 26 x 19-3/4 inches (sheet) signed, dated, and numbered 32/67

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Yvonne PICKERING-CARTER (b. 1939)

Yvonne Pickering-Carter was born in Washington, D.C. on February 6, 1939, and raised in Charleston, S.C. In Charleston, her father worked as a dentist, but dabbled in building houses and furniture, a skill he taught his daughter. Carter, until recently, had been living in a large house in Charleston her father built.

She earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree (1962) and a Master of Fine Arts degree (1968) at Howard University, studying under Lila Oliver Asher and Lois Mailou Jones. Pickering-Carter worked primarily as an abstract painter for many years before incorporating watercolor, collage, and performance art into her body of work later in the 1980s.

At one time, Carter worked with very large canvases, presenting one work at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in a 15 x 40 foot space. Her need for large canvas led her to purchasing supply from a sailboat supplier in Baltimore. Her pivot to performance art came after a time of experimentation with her canvases- draping them on the wall, stitching and padding them, or cutting them into strips. Carter described literally taking a canvas off of the wall and wrapping herself in it. Her first performance was in 1981, having never witnessed a performance art piece before herself. Her performance work came to incorporate poetry, sound, and movement.

One performance, on January 8, 1984, at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Carter used music composed by Lawrence Moss, who was director of composition at the University of Maryland. untitled, 1965-1969 oil on canvas 45-1/2 x 28 inches signed in pencil along lower right side (typical), and on the stretcher verso

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Mavis PUSEY (1928-2019)

Mavis Pusey was best known for her hard-edge, non-representational images. This was very much her singular focus throughout her entire career.

Pusey was born in Jamaica in 1928. Her parents died when she was young. An aunt taught her to sew, and her first job was cutting fabric in a garment factory in Kingston, Jamaica. When she was 18, Pusey went to NY to study at the Traphagen School of Fashion. Due to financial constraints she began attending classes at the Art Students League instead, where she studied painting and printmaking over the next four years. One of her teachers was Will Barnet.

When her student visa expired, Pusey went to London, and then Paris, where her first solo exhibition was held at Galerie Louis Soulanges in 1968. When she returned to NY, her work Dejyqea (oil/canvas, 72 x 60 in.) was included in the important exhibition, Contemporary Black Artists in America, held in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. She worked with Robert Blackburn at his workshop for three years and was struck by the energy and constant movement of the city. Many of her prints from this period reflect a focused interest on the city’s construction. Pusey also taught at various institutions throughout her career including Rutgers University and the New School for Social Research. She moved to Virginia later in her career.

In 2017, her work was included in the exhibition, Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. It was the first U.S. presentation dedicated exclusively to the formal and historical dialogue of abstraction by women artists of color. Pusey’s work is found in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. Dissolution of X, c. 1970 color screenprint on wove paper 28-3/4 x 22-1/2 inches (full margins) signed and titled, with “Proof” (aside from an edition of 30)

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Mavis PUSEY (1928-2019)

Eric, c. 1968 lithograph 17 x 20-3/4 inches (image) 19-5/8 x 25-1/2 inches (sheet) signed and numbered, 17/40 This image is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum An excerpt from “The Art Students League of NY Honors Mavis Pusey” (2019): Her clean lines and purposefully placed Yves Klein-like blues in the lithograph “Eric” (no date) conjure up a portrait of a person who appears to be at odds with the environment, juggling and angling to keep things from devolving into chaos. It is reminiscent of the man on the old TV shows spinning plates on tall thin sticks adding to the number of them until one finally falls.

Eric’s slanted mouth speaks to discontent or mirth as he tries to make sense of it all.

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Bridge Workers, 1968 color screenprint 9-1/2 x 13-1/2 inches (image) 14-1/4 x 20-3/4 inches (sheet) signed, numbered 4/17

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Mavis PUSEY (1928-2019)

Decaying Construction, c. 1970 screen print on wove paper 28-1/2 x 21-3/4 inches (full sheet) 28 x 21-1/2 inches (image) signed and titled with AP

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Broken Construction at Twilight, 1977 lithograph 24 x 19 inches (image) full margins signed, titled, and AP

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Alma THOMAS (1891-1978)

Expressionist painter and art educator Alma Thomas was born in Georgia in 1891. Her family moved to Washington D.C. while she was in her mid-teens, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life. Thomas enrolled in Howard University, studying under James V. Herring and became the first graduate of the newly organized art department in 1924. She began teaching after graduation, but continued studying art and painting part-time. In 1946, she joined Lois Mailou Jones’ Little Paris group, members of which sketched, painted and exhibited together in the Washington D.C. area. She studied painting at American University under Joe Summerford, Robert Gates, and Jacob Kainen; all of whom inspired her to look at the structure of a painting differently and use color as a single, qualitative element.

When she retired, she began painting in earnest. Her work evolved from more traditional styles and themes to fully realized abstract works that explored color and composition which reflected her own unique vision of nature as well as incorporating influence from the Washington Color School. She was also known as a brilliant watercolorist. Her first retrospective exhibition, curated by James A. Porter, was held at Howard University in 1966. For this show, she created the Earth paintings, a series of works inspired by nature that resembled Byzantine mosaics. In 1972, she became the first African American woman to be given a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. In 2021, the Columbus Museum and the Chryler Museum of Art mounted the exhibiton, Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful, with approximately 100 works, including her rarely seen theatrical designs and beloved abstract paintings.

Currently, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, who has the largest public collection of works by Alma Thomas in the world, is showing Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas through June 2, 2024.

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untitled, 1960-1970 watercolor on paper 5-3/4 x 7-1/4 inches initialed

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Evangeline MONTGOMERY (b. 1930)

Evangeline Juliet, “EJ” Montgomery was born in New York. Her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a homemaker. As a teenager, she discovered her affinity for creating art when she received a paint set as a gift. Montgomery graduated from Seward High School in New York City. In 1955, she moved to Los Angeles with her husband and studied at the Los Angeles City College (1955-58) and Cal Sate, Los Angeles (1958-62). Montgomery lived in Nigeria from 1962-1965. Upon her return, she earned a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1969. She also studied at UC Berkeley (1968-70).

EJ worked as an artist in several mediums, including printmaking, painting, sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry design. She was also a very important administrator and advocate of African American art. She worked as a curator at the Oakland Museum from 1968-1974, and organized the retrospective show on the work of Sargent Johnson. Montgomery was impressed with Johnson’s work in enamel and successfully executed works of her own in that medium.

Montgomery moved to Washington, D.C. in 1980 to work as a community affairs director for WHMM-TV. Shortly thereafter, in 1983, she began working with the United States Department of State as a program development officer for the Arts America Program, organizing overseas exhibitions for American artists—including African American artists.

Montgomery’s innovative work in printmaking was included in the exhibition, Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction 1960’s to Today, which was held at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, in 2017. This show featured a group of Black female abstractionists and included Betty Clayton, Chakaia Booker, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Howardena Pindell, Mavis Pusey, Shinique Smith, Gilda Snowden, Sylvia Snowdon, Alma Thomas, Mildred Thompson, among others.

Love Letter, 2010 screen print on wove paper 20 x 16 inches (image) 29-1/2 x 22-1/4 inches (sheet) signed, dated, titled, and numbered 3/3

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Norman LEWIS (1909-1979)

Although Norman Lewis began his career predominantly as a social realist, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with the genre’s ability to manifest societal change. He began to explore abstraction in the mid-1940’s, developing a personal style consisting of a cast of calligraphic figures reminiscent of pictographs. From 1946 to 1964, Lewis was represented by the Willard Gallery, where he had six solo shows and participated in two group exhibitions.

Like most African American artists of the time, he straddled two worlds, one of the African American artist, the other that of the abstractionist. He co-founded the Harlem Artist’s Guild, 1935 and the Spiral Group, 1963, as well as the Cinque Gallery. He was the only African American included in the Studio 35 sessions, organized by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline to define abstract expressionism. The Museum of Modern Art subsequently included his work in the exhibition, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America.

Lewis’ first retrospective exhibition was held in 1976 at the Graduate Center of City College, New York. His work is found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Getting It Together, 1975 color etching and aquatint with embossing on Arches paper 17-3/4 x 17-1/2 inches signed artist proof aside from an edition of 50; Printed at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, New York. Acton/Fine 34; Fine p. 142.

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Frank WIMBERLEY (b. 1926)

Abstract expressionist Frank Wimberley was born in Pleasantville, New Jersey in 1926. He currently resides in New York City and Sag Harbor, where he exhibits and creates his beautiful compositions of color, depth and texture.

After serving in the army, he attended Howard University, Washington, D.C., where he studied under James Porter, James Lesesne Wells, and Loïs Mailou Jones.

While attending Howard, Wimberley also became immersed in jazz, listening to it and playing it himself.

Wimberley started out as a ceramicist, but decided he was able to work in several mediums. In the 1970’s he began to explore texture in his art - creating collages consisting of pieces of scrap cardboard, paper, cloth, and metal that he used to explore contours and spatial arrangements His work is included in numerous public collections, galleries, and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Art Gallery.

His work has been shown in exhibitions at the June Kelly Gallery, NY; Cinque Gallery, NY; Acts of Art Gallery, NY; Opalka Gallery, NY; Kenkeleba Gallery, NY; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY.

untitled, 1977 mixed media collage on paper 14 x 9 inches signed and dated

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Lionel LOFTON (b. 1954)

Lofton studied with John Biggers at Texas Southern University (Houston) and Clarence Talley at A&M University (Prairie View).

He has exhibited extensively from the 1980s to present, including at the 1993 Black Creativity Art Exhibition, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL; The Harmon & Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art: Works on Paper, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 2009; In the Hands of African American Collectors: The Personal Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2007; A Century of African American Art: The Paul R. Jones Collection, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2004.

As an artist, I would have my work take you on a journey. My work should help you document everyday living experiences from work to play, from life to death, and from sadness to happiness. Come and journey with me for Life is an ever evolving experience, full of new insights from day to day.

I am concerned with the art of exploring and creating art that speaks to me and others. My art productions are about our environment, life experiences, and our spiritual being. My response to the world exemplifies the educational and functional response to the world around me.

I use vibrant colors, forms, shapes, and textures. Serigraphs, monotypes, lithographs, acrylics, watercolors, and mixed-media collages, dynamically shape my repertoire. Also, I use art techniques like dry brush techniques, wet on wet, slashing and many other media techniques to express the relationship between a concept and a visual reference.

-REF: Personal Statement, the artist’s website Side by Side, 2023 acrylic on canvas 60 x 48 inches signed, dated and titled

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