Sculpture and Ceramics

SCULPTURE & CERAMICS 12/02 Winter Signature Auction

BLACK ART AUCTION

SCULPTURE & CERAMICS 12/02 Winter Signature Auction

BLACK ART AUCTION

Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012)

Elizabeth Catlett was an important African American sculptor and graphic artist, best-known for her depictions of the Black experience in the second half of the 20th century, and specifically from the female perspective.

This auction includes several iconic examples of her work across both sculpture and printmaking.

Mask, (1973) is a rare wood sculpture that was part of a series depicting abstracted African masks.

Dr. Melanie Anne Herzog, Professor Emerita of Art History at Edgewood College, Madison, Wisconsin, said this about a previously offered Mask sculpture, which is applicable to the one offered in this sale, as well, “This visual language extends into Catlett’s abstract allusions to the body, and, in the case of Mask, to masks and other forms of masquerade regalia worn and activated by bodies in motion. The title of Mask, like the form of the sculpture itself, is at once generalized and evocative of Africa as a source – the “heritable sensibilities” that resonated so profoundly for Catlett. One of several of Catlett’s explorations of the mask as a formal play of line, mass and volume, and solids and spaces, Mask is composed of elegant concave and convex curvilinear shapes carved to enclose a volumetric space. But unlike a mask made to be worn, this is a visually and spatially complex three-dimensional form in which views into and through the form are differently nuanced. From these multiple vantage points, the sculpture’s openings and enclosures resonate with suggestions of anatomical figuration, protection, expansiveness, and embrace.”

Elizabeth Catlett: The Resonance of Form

Mask, 1973

carved rosewood sculpture 11-1/8 x 3-5/8 x 3-1/2 inches (not including base) base: 2-7/8 x 3-5/8 x 3-5/8 inches initialed, “EC” on lower part of sculpture original artist’s label with artist name, title, and price

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Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Pensive,

1946 cast bronze with a dark brown patina 17 x 10-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches (sculpture only) 8-5/8 x 6-3/4 x 2 inches (base only) signed E.C. dated and numbered 4/10 (the artist began casting the edition in 1967) llustrated: David Driskell Hidden Heritage; Afro-American Art, 1800 - 1950, fig. 56, p. 84; Lucinda Gedeon. Elizabeth Catlett Sculpture; A Fifty-Year Retrospective (another cast); Samella Lewis, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, p, 172 (another cast).

Exhibited: Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800 - 1950, a traveling exhibition organized by the Art Museum Association of America, San Francisco, starting at the Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle, WA, and including the Mississippi Museum of Art, September 14, 1985 - January 10, 1988 (a different example).

Pensive is a cast bronze originally conceived in 1946 (in plaster). Catlett

began casting the image in bronze in 1967 (the complete edition is 10 with a few artist proofs). Exemplary of the artist’s earlier work, Pensive depicts a strong Black female, sleeves rolled and arms crossed.

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Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Citali,

n.d. bronze sculpture on a wooden base 14 x 4-1/8 x 2-3/4 inches base: 3 3/4 x 5 1/4 x 2 inches initialed, E.C.

Citlali (date unknown), is a bronze sculpture depicting a young girl. The name of the subject is typically associated with a young female of Native American or Mexican heritage.

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Richmond Barthé (1901-1989)

trained in classical figurative sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, and throughout his career produced honest intimate portraits of AfricanAmericans. The beauty of his work is found in the reverence to the human figure. He portrayed celebrities and everyday subjects with equal respect.

His informed, positive approach is how he chose to run counter to the social and racial injustices he and most African Americans experienced.

Inner Music (originally conceived in 1961; this cast 1986). Barthe

struggled with his mental health in 1961, and this image is one of the first he created after returning to his studio. Margaret Vendryes writes, “He was convinced his breakdown silenced his muse, The lively nude Inner Music marks this period of clarity for Barthe. He made it through difficult months of soul searching and was once again moving more comfortably to his own inner music.” (Barthe, A Life in Sculpture, p. 171)

The Seeker (originally conceived in 1963, this cast 1986). Vendryes:

"The Seeker came to Barthe in a dream that made him feel well: ‘For days and days I would think about this dream, remembering the feeling of walking through the beautiful water, along the silent, sunlit bottom. ‘ The Seeker is Barthe’s final self-portrait as a man effortlessly gliding across the ocean floor seeking the meaning of life. This figure had a new proportion—‘nine heads high…the same proportions as the seven foot Watusi tribe,' which Barthe felt added sophistication.” (p. 173)

Inner Music, 1961/1986

bronze 23-1/2 inches (height) Signed and dated 86, AP Provenance: the collection of Jan Goodman and the late Jerry Manpearl, Los Angeles, CA Literature: Barthe, A Life in Sculpture, Margaret Rose Vendryes, 2008; p. 171.

Barthe His Life in Art, Dr. Samella Lewis, Published by Unity Works in collaboration with the Museum of African American Art Los Angeles, CA, 2009; p.18.

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Richmond Barthé (1901-1989) The Seeker

, 1963/1986 bronze 24-1/2 inches (height) Signed and dated 86, AP Provenance: the collection of Jan Goodman and the late Jerry Manpearl, Los Angeles, CA Literature: This work appears in an image in Barthe, A Life in Sculpture, 2008; p. 172 and dated 1963. This image is pictured in Samella Lewis’ Barthe, His Life in Art, 2009, p.20-21, dated 1965.

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William Artis (1914-1977)

Sculptor, ceramicist, and educator, William Ellsworth Artis was born in Washington, North Carolina in 1914. He relocated to Harlem in 1926 where he studied sculpture and pottery at the Augusta Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in the early 1930’s. Artis won the John Hope prize, in association with the Harmon Foundation for his terra cotta sculpture, Head of a Girl. This allowed him to receive further instruction at the Art Student’s League in New York in 1933. He received a second John Hope prize two years later which he used to continue his education at the Craft Student’s League.

From the Johnson Collection (Spartanburg, SC): "The late 1940s and early 1950s were a pivotal period as Artis garnered national media attention and numerous awards. The July 1946 issue of Life magazine illustrated an Artis sculpture along with other selections executed by African American artists, showcasing the objects “not because they were done by Negroes but because they represent some of the best works turned out by American artists today.”

Head of a Young Girl, c. 1945

terra cotta on a wood base 4-1/2 inches (sculpture) 5-1/2 inches (overall height, including base) signed WArtis

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Richard Hunt (b. 1935)

Hybrid Muse was commissioned by the Illinois Arts Council Foundation to honor the 20th anniversaries of the council and the National Endowment for the Arts. The sculpture is given to the recipients of the Governor’s Awards for the Arts.

Hybrid Figure # 10 (1987). T ​ he Hybrid Figure series typifies the abstract sculptures of Richard Hunt in its use of metal's tensile strength to evoke graceful, soaring movement and ephemerality as well as power and stability. His goal, says the artist, is "a resolution of the tensions between the sense of freedom one has in contemplating nature and the sometimes restrictive, closed feeling engendered by the rigors of the city." This work is one of several from a long-running series in which the title word "hybrid" suggests the combination of organic and industrial forms. Emerging from the work's integrated base, its upright and branching elements dynamically engage surrounding space as they hint simultaneously at a standing figure with outspread arms, the wings of a bird or an aircraft, and fingers of flame. (REF: Office of the Governor, Illinois) Richard Hunt grew up on the South side of Chicago and he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the mid 1950s, his career took off when one of his sculptures was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, NY. Hilton Kramer, author of The Age of the Avant-Garde, described Richard Hunt as ‘..one of the most gifted and assured artists working in the direct-metal, open-form medium—and I mean not only in his own country and generation, but anywhere in the world.’ (Two Sculptors, Two Eras, Richmond Barthe and Richard Hunt, Samella Lewis, 1992, p. 14)

Hybrid Muse, 2002

bronze sculpture 19-3/4 x 8 x 6 inches signed and dated Illustrated: Hunt, Richard, et al. Richard Hunt. Gregory R. Miller & Co, 2022. p. 225 (a different cast)

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Richard Hunt (b. 1935) Hybrid Figure #10

, 1987 bronze on a wood triangular base 23-1/4 inches (h) signed, dated and numbered 3/5

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Agustin Cardenas (1927-2001)

Cardenas was a descendant of slaves from Senegal and the Congo. He was born in Matanzas, Cuba and studied in Havanna.

He left Cuba for Paris in the 1950s and at the invitation of Andre Breton, became involved in the Surrealist movement there. In 1955, his work debuted in the United States at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in an exhibition of the work of 17 Cuban artists, titled, Gulf-Caribbean Art Exhibition. His wood sculpture, Lovers, was included.

His work is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum, New York, and in an essay written on the museum website they provide a quote by the artist (Quoted in José Pierre, La Sculpture de Cárdenas, Brussels, 1971, p. 11.): "In Paris," he said, "I discovered what a man is…what African culture is...what a Black man is.”

In 1960, an exhibition titled Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanter’s Domain, at the D’Arcy Galleries (NYC) included a large totemic carved wood sculpture by Cardenas. His first solo exhibit in the United States took place in Chicago at the Richard Feigen Gallery (1961). The show included 32 sculptures executed in wood and marble from 1956-1961.

He worked primarily in painted and carved wood and marble, but also in bronze. A large bronze dated 1957, titled, Couple Antillais, stands at an intersection on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Image Credit: The Estate of Agustín Cárdenas

Image Credit: Martine Franck

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untitled, 1950-1960

carved and painted wood sculpture 34-3/4 (not including marble base) x 6 x 5-3/4 inches base only: 7 x 7 x 1-3/4 inches initialed

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Sargent Johnson (1888-1967)

Sargent Johnson was best known as a modernist sculptor, influenced by the cultures of Mexico, Latin America, and West Africa. Born in 1887 to a father of Swedish descent and a mother of Cherokee and AfricanAmerican heritage, Johnson could have passed for white, but he remained firmly aligned with his African American heritage. In fact, according to him, the aim of his art was to show African Americans how beautiful they were to themselves.

Johnson was orphaned at an early age and sent to live with an uncle, whose wife, May Howard Jackson, happened to be a well-known sculptor of African American portrait busts. He received his first formal art training in Boston, before relocating to the West Coast in 1915.

Early in his career, Johnson’s work consisted of small scale ceramic heads, primarily of children. He became a regular exhibitor in the Harmon Foundation exhibitions between 1926 to 1935. In the 1930’s, he experimented with a variety of material including terra cotta, wood, beaten copper, marble, terrazzo, and porcelain. He also produced prints and drawings.

He was employed by the California WPA, eventually becoming a supervisor, and created public commissions on a large scale, such as sculptures for the Golden Gate International Exposition held in 1939 on Treasure Island. In the 1940s he traveled to Mexico, using funds from the Abraham Rosenberg Scholarship, where he studied the culture, ceramics, and sculpture of the region. While still incorporating the geometric shapes and motifs of indigenous peoples, his work became increasingly more abstract until his death in 1967.

In 1970, the Oakland Museum organized the first retrospective of his work, and in 1998, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition entitled, Sargent Johnson: African American Modernist. His work may be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Head of a Boy, 1940-1950

terra cotta sculpture 7 x 3-1/2 inches (sculpture) base only: 5-3/4 x 5 x 3-1/2 inches slightly recessed into a dark wooden base signed along bottom edge of the sculpture

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Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Head of a Woman (Untitled)

, c. 1938 terra cotta sculpture with a green-black glaze 5-1/2 inches (h) not including base signed, “Sargent Johnson” along rear bottom edge

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Earl Hooks, Sr. (1927-2005) Man of Sorrows

, 1950 unglazed terracotta sculpture on wooden base 11 x 6-1/2 x 3 inches (sculpture) 7-5/8 x 4-7/8 x 2-1/4 inches (base only) Signed on interior COA from family of the artist Exhibited: A Homecoming: Selected Works of Art by Earl J. Hooks (1927-2005), The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, Sept 12, 2006-Feb 16, 2007.

Literature: Two Centuries of Black American Art, David Driskell (catalog accompanying the exhibition, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976), p. 202 (marble version) This unique example of Hooks’ iconic image in ceramic is arguably the most important version. While the artist successfully worked in virtually every medium, it might be fair to say he thought in clay. Whether he was painting, taking photos or creating sculpture in other materials, the vast majority of his work references, directly or indirectly, his work in ceramics.

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Marion Perkins (1908-1961)

Marion Perkins was born in 1908 near Marche, Arkansas. When his parents died in 1916, he was sent to live with an aunt in Chicago. Young Perkins became interested in sculpture as a hobby and was largely self taught.

His work caught the eye of Margaret Burroughs and she introduced him to Si Gordon, who was an Illinois Art Project sculptor and teacher. Gordon gave Perkins his first formal training in sculpting at the YMCA at 38th and Wabash, around 1938.

Perkins' process involved direct carving in stone or wood. His politics also informed his work. Perkins was a committed Marxist and intellectual and “believed art could convey ideas effectively only through recognizable imagery.” Abstraction, in his views, was biased toward the elite, whereas figurative sculpture applied to all.

Perkins gleaned much of the marble and sandstone he used for his sculptures from homes being wrecked in the Chicago area and he worked in his backyard. In 1940, two of his sculptures were chosen to appear in the American Negro Exposition. His work appeared regularly in shows at the Art Institute of Chicago throughout the 1940’s and 50’s. In 1947 he received a Rosenwald Grant, and in 1948, he won 2nd prize at the 52nd Annual Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, for his work, Ethiopia Awakening. He taught classes at the South Side Community Art Center.

By the 1950’s, Perkins’ work took on a more political tone. One of his most important works, Man of Sorrow, depicting a Black Christ, not only received a prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1951 (Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition) but was also purchased for their collection.

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

Marion Perkins (1908-1961): Southside Sculptor Head of a Boy, c. 1950

carved stone sculpture 7-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches (sculpture only), initialed MP on a contemporary painted wooden base (2-1/4 x 6-1/4 x 6-1/4 inches)

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Studio garden of Marion Perkins and Earl Hooks, Sr. with works by both artists, Gary, Indiana. Photo Courtesy Earl Hooks, Jr.

Marion Perkins and his sculpture in the classroom, Photo courtesy of Earl Hooks, Jr.

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Ref: Schulman, Daniel. “Marion Perkins: A Chicago Sculptor Rediscovered.”

Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 1999, p. 220243+267-271.

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Al LaVergne (1943-2020) Untitled

, 2008-2010 welded steel rods 27-1/2 x 27 x 24 inches unsigned Al Lavergne grew up in rural Louisiana, the son of a sharecropper. He remembered the necessity of knowing how to use all sorts of tools and even in some cases, invent tools to get a job done. He looked forward to visiting the blacksmith with his father, and was fascinated by the work done with hot metal. These early influences stayed with him, and as a graduate student at UC Berkeley, he began to favor welding, because of the durability and the freedom it allowed for innovation during the process of creation.

Lavergne earned his BA at Southern University Baton Rouge (1968) and his MFA at University of California Berkeley (1973). He exhibited extensively throughout the 1980s-2000s all across the country, and had one person shows at Governors State University, Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Louisiana State University, Kellogg Community College, Stephen F. Ausin (Nacogdoches, TX), to name a few. He earned important public commissions, including at Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Battle Creek Art Center, Western Michigan University,s Grand Rapid Art Center, The Old State Capitol Museum (Baton Rouge, LA), Southern University Baton Rouge, etc. He created an outdoor sculpture for Obafemi Awolowo University, Osun State, Nigeria; Martin Luther King Gateway Project, Shreveport, LA, and Musicians at the State Capitol Gardens, Shreveport, LA. Al Lavergne was a Professor of Art at Southern University Baton Rouge (1974-1990) and Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI (19902019). He was awarded two Fulbright Scholarships to travel to Nigeria.

Lavergne’s primary philosophical concern in his work was balance in space. His work pursues a vocabulary in rhythm and symmetry. He worked in abstract and figurative subjects, but he claimed the exact subject matter concerned him much less than the positive and negative in space. All elements to him were expressive. Lavergne counted many important artists as friends, influences, and co-conspirators, including Mel Edwards, Richard Hunt, John Scott and Ed Clark.

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Houston E.“Keg” Chandler (1914-2015)

“Resistance of the material is not itself a hindrance…it creates fertile energy in one’s mind.”

Houston Chandler, or “Keg” to his friends and acquaintances, attended Vashon High School and Lincoln University in St Louis. Chandler was a talented athlete as well as artist, and he competed in the 1934 St Louis relays. He was also a first-rate football player. He continued his education at the University of Iowa, earning both an MA and an MFA. He was the second African-American to earn an MFA from the University of Iowa, the first being his friend and fellow sculptor, Elizabeth Catlett. He studied with Humbert Albrizio, Lester Longman and James LeChay. During the summer of 1946 he resided at 713 S. Capitol St. in Iowa City and the 1946-47 directory listed his address as 29 W. College St. His work, he writes, “is primitive in the sense that he seeks the simplicity that brings out the most powerful line of expression.”

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Chandler experimented as an abstract painter, but his most important artistic endeavors were executed as sculpture or prints (aquatints). He was versatile and proficient in numerous mediums: wood, stone, beaten lead (masks) and ceramic. He found the physicality of print-making similar to making sculpture, and being the athlete that he was, this appealed to him. He was awarded many prizes at exhibitions for both mediums.

His work can be found in the collections of Atlanta University, the University of Iowa, National Gallery of Art, and the St. Louis Art Museum

Torso, c. 1946

carved wood sculpture 18 x 7 inches Signed “Keg”

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Kehinde Wiley (b.1977)

Kehinde Wiley restages classical portraits and sculptures, replacing historical white subjects with contemporary subjects of color. His lush, narratively rich canvases draw on textile patterns and the compositional tenets of Old Masters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David. Embracing ornate decorative elements, Wiley dignifies his subjects and subverts the whiteness that has long dominated Western art history.

The artist received his MFA from Yale in 2001 and has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, and Milan, among other cities. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Nasher Museum of Art, among many others. In 2018, Wiley painted Barack Obama’s presidential portrait.

In 2019, he launched the Black Rock Residency program in Senegal, which fosters younger artists’ careers and Africa’s broader art ecosystem.

Louis XVI, the Sun King, 2007 cast marble dust and resin 10 inches (high) signed A/P 21/23

Provenance: Gift of the artist to Michael Defeo, a sculptor and 3-D model creator who helped Kehinde Wiley create the maquettes for this series.

Image Credit: Portrait of Kehinde Wiley, 2018.

Photographer: Brad Ogbonna

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Leslie Garland Bolling (1898-1955)

Watson writes about this example: “Similar to Beautiful Womanhood (cat. no. 19) this nude figure depicts a woman of generous proportions holding her hands behind her head. Bolling used the gesture to delineate the musculature of the shoulders and upper arms. The weight of the figure falls on her right leg as her left leg bends with her toe of her shoe touching the base. The sculpture was painted yellow at an undiscovered date with black paint added over the yellow to highlight the figure’s hair and her shoes. The base was also painted black, possibly obliterating any inscription. In 1931 Carl Van Vechten wrote Hunter T. Stagg that he had sold a yellow reclining figure carved by Bolling to Eddie Wasserman.

Bolling himself left no explanation for painting his figures.”

Leslie Bolling was born in Surry County, the son of Clinton C. Bolling, a blacksmith, and his first wife, Mary Brown Bolling. He was educated at the Hampton Normal Institute and Virginia Union University in Richmond, both historically black institutions. After his 1924 graduation, he began working as a porter in Richmond. In 1926, Bolling began carving wood without having any formal instruction. Richmond artist Berkeley Williams Jr. noticed his work at a 1928 group exhibition by the Young Women’s Christian Association. Williams helped bring Bolling’s work to the attention of Harlem Renaissance writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten of New York. This brought him national exposure and led to his works being featured in many ground-breaking exhibitions promoting African-American artists between 1928 and 1943. These included Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists, Smithsonian Institution, 1933; Exhibition of Productions

by Negro Arts, New York, 1933; The Art of the Negro, New York, 1934; The Wood Sculptures of Leslie Boiling, a one-man show at the thensegregated Richmond Academy of Arts (now the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts), 1935; the New Jersey State Museum, 1935; Exhibition of Fine Arts Productions by American Negroes, Texas Centennial, Dallas, 1936; and Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro (1851 to 1940), Chicago, 1940. Thomas Hart Benton visited the 1935 Richmond exhibition and singled out Bolling’s work as sculptures that “show real merit, and a new kind of form” and he offered to support the artist for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Bolling left Richmond in the early 1940s; little is known about his life after that. He died in New York on September 27, 1955, and his body was returned to Richmond for burial.

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Female Burlesque Figure, c. 1935 carved wood and painted sculpture 13 inches high unsigned, but documented

Illustrated: Batson, Barbara C. Freeing Art from Wood: The Sculpture of Leslie Garland Bolling.

Library of Virginia, 2006., pp. 84-85, no. 21.

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Otto Neals (b. 1931)

Otto Neals was part of a group of Harlem-based artists known as the Twentieth-Century Creators. This group eventually split and the dominant faction started Weusi (a Swahili term for “blackness”), and then five of those members founded the Nyubba Ya Sanna (House of Art), located at 132nd Street in Harlem. Neals had also studied at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop and the Brooklyn Museum’s school.

Neals began participating in the Fulton Art Fair in Bedford-Stuyvesant (1950s-60s), along with artists Ernie Crichlow and Tom Feelings. He made two trips to Guyana, the second in 1970, and when he returned, he became much more invested in sculpture, working out of a studio in Brooklyn.

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).

Sand and Foam, 1997

bronze with blue-green patina on a wood base 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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Leroy Johnson (1937-2022)

Leroy Johnson was a painter and sculptor from the inner city in Philadelphia. He used discarded objects to create his constructions, and in 1992-93 began making these found object tabletop row houses, which represent the dilapidated buildings in his neighborhood.

Johnson studied at the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He earned a master’s degree in human services from Lincoln University in 1988.

He was inspired by authors Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison and visual artists Horace Pippin, Thornton Dial, Romare Bearden and Beauford Delaney. In the 1960s-70s, Johnson was involved in the Black Arts Movement in Philadelphia. He exhibited in 1966 in the Exhibition of Contemporary Negro Art at the William Penn Memorial Museum in Harrisburg, PA, and at the seminal Afro American Artists 1800-1969 sponsored by the Philadelphia School District and the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center (1969), and more recently at the Woodmere Museum’s We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s (2015).

He considered himself an “urban expressionist”.

Image Credit: Leroy Johnson, 2014 Pew Fellow.

Photo by Ryan Collerd.

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Untitled, 2000-2010

found object assemblage; wood, cigar boxes, magazine, paint and metal 9-1/2 (h) x 7-1/2 x 7-1/4 inches

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Inge Hardison (1914-2016)

Hardison studied at Tennessee State A & I, the Art Students League (NY), and Vassar College. She worked in the theater and as a fine artist, primarily devoted to photography and sculpture. One of Hardison’s bestknown images is a sculpture of Sojourner Truth (1990), a gift given by NY Governor Cuomo to President Nelson Mandela.

“Sculpture woke up again in the ‘60s. While teaching in a Freedom School in Harlem, I became reacquainted with the towering bravery and the deep commitment to freedom and justice of our black foreparents, and was moved to begin an ongoing series of sculptured portraits I called Negro Giants in History. In the ‘70s, I received my first public commission from Old Taylor Whiskies to do the Ingenious Americans, nine sculpted portraits of little-known black scientists and inventors, for a nationwide promotion.”

(REF: Gumbo Ya Ya, An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, intro by Leslie King-Hammond, 1995)

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Portrait Bust of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, 1966 painted plaster 8 x 3-3/4 x 5-1/2 inches signed and dated

Portrait of Dr. Charles Drew, 1967 painted plaster 8-7/8 x 5 x 5 inches signed and dated

Frederick McKinley Jones (1893-1961), 1966 painted plaster 8-7/8 x 5 x 5 inches signed and dated

Jones was a mechanical engineer and inventor, known for his innovative work in refrigerated vehicles.

Portrait Bust of Matthew Henson, 1966 painted plaster 8-7/8 x 5 x 5 inches signed and dated

Henson was an explorer who accompanied Robert Peary to the Arctic.

Portrait Bust of Norbert Rillieux, 1966 painted plaster 8-7/8 x 5 x 5 inches signed and dated

Rillieux was a Louisiana Creole inventor and chemical engineer. His invention revolutionized sugar processing.

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Myra Ivory (1924-1993)

Myra Ivory worked as a sculptor and illustrator, favoring a figurative style.

She constructed images in paper mache and also clay, which she then used various fabrics to adorn.

Ivory was born in Chicago, and studied at Howard University and earned a master’s degree in recreation therapy from New York University.

Ivory exhibited at a show in NYC at the Lever House in 1981 in good company: Richmond Barthe, Camille Billops, Betty Blayton, Dr. Selma Burke, Elizabeth Catlett, James Denmark, Melvin Edwards, Inge Hardison, Richard Hunt, Myra Ivory and Dr. Jack Jordan. The exhibit was presented

by Counterpoints Guild, an organization formed in 1967 to offer a forum for expression of black artists. REF: New York Times, 2-18-1981.

In 1983, she exhibited with artists such as Al Hollingsworth and Otto Neals at the Fifth Annual Outdoor Garden Art Exhibit of Kenco Art Associates.

She also exhibited at the Carnegie University in Manhattan in the 1970s.

She was a lifelong educator.

untitled, Gospel Singers, 1995

painted paper mache sculpture with a wire armature 21-1/2 inches (h) x 27 inches (w) signed underneath, “Myra Ivory, 95-3”

Image: The Journal News, White Plains, NY, Fri. July 8, 1983, p. 41.

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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. ... 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 Post-Dispatch

untitled, 1990

mixed media assemblage; painted wood, cord, stainless steel, found objects, and synthetic fur 24 x 16 x 12 inches signed

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Carl Latimer (1913-1991)

Carl Latimer is an African-American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and actor, who spent most of his life in Italy, France and Denmark.

Similarly to painters Clifford Jackson, Herbert Gentry, Walter Henry Williams, Arthur Hardie, and Harvey Tristan Cropper, Latimer left the U.S. for Denmark and Sweden in the 1950s because those countries offered greater opportunity and equality to minorities.

Latimer grew up in Brooklyn, and studied at the American National Academy School of Fine Arts (1944-45), where it is thought that he first met Russian sculptor, Ossip Zadkine. He followed Zadkine to Paris to continue his studies, also spending time at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts.

In the late 1950s, he moved to Italy and worked as an artist and also an actor, and then in the 1960s, he moved to Denmark. He had his first solo show in 1968 in Kertiminde (an area where William H. Johnson had worked decades before) and Danish art critic Peter Eriksen said about the exhibit: “Farver som vaaben I kamp mod vold” (Colors as weapon in the fight against violence).

Latimer created abstract sculptures and colorful paintings throughout his career.

Carl Raleigh Latimer (1913-1991)

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untitled, c. 1960’s

welded metal sculpture on wooden base 50 x 8-1/4 inches (at widest point) Signed LAT on bottom

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CERAMICS

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Marva Lee Pitchford Jolly (1937-2012)

Jolly was a Chicago-based ceramicist but she considered herself "a Southerner, born of cotton-picker heritage". "My story pots reflect the stories I've heard and listen to all my life. Many of these voices have universal concepts , yet come from very personal experiences. [They] also talk about the capacity to grow, a quality that is present in all of us."

Jolly was born in Crenshaw Mississippi, and received her B.S. in Urban Studies (1960, Roosevelt University, Chicago) and he M.S. in Ethnic Studies and Political Science (1974, Governor's State University, Park Forest, IL). She founded her ceramic studio, Mudpeoples in 1983--"an audacious decision for a black middle-aged woman."

Gumbo Ya-Ya, Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, pp. 124-125.

Photo courtesy Rose Blouin

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L to R:

untitled, c. 1990

ceramic vessel 16 inches (height) 10 inches (diameter) signed

untitled (Black woman in a flowing dress and hat),c. 1990 ceramic vessel 4-1/4 inches (height) 13-1/2 inches (widest point across diagonally) incised signature free-form shape

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untitled, c. 1990

ceramic vessel 2 inches (height) 15 inches (length) 11-1/2 (width) incised signature blue-green glaze exterior with some crystalline effects in interior; abstract design

untitled, c. 1990

three-legged ceramic vessel 7-3/4 inches (height) 14-1/2 inches (diameter) initialed and dedicated “to Kay” decorated with a blue flame glaze to exterior and a dark green and black glaze interior. Free-form top.

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untitled (Black figures), c. 1990 ceramic vessel 18 inches (height) 4 inches (diameter) signed

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untitled, (abstracted figures and animals), c. 1990 ceramic vessel 17-1/2 inches (height) 3-1/2 inches (diameter) signed

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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 (195862). 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.

Evangeline Montgomery; Photo by Gustavo Garcia

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untitled, c. 1970

ceramic vase 6 3/4 (h) x 10 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches initialed, EJM

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Fred Wilson (1932-2012)

Fred Robert Wilson moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975 bringing with him the Muddy Wheel Pottery School, Studio and Gallery that he established in Van Nuys, California.

Wilson is a noted artist, creating sculpture, pottery, masks, photographs, paintings, stone carvings and woodcarvings for nearly 40 years. He is the founder of the New Mexico African-American Artists' Guild, which under his guidance, says nominator Pamelya Herndon, "helped create the face of African-American art in New Mexico."

Fred R. Wilson. Back cover photo from “Soul Reflections / Heart Expressions” by the artist (1996).

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untitled, 2000s

ceramic lidded vessel (glazed interior) 4-3/8 x 4-1/4 x 4-1/4 inches signed

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