Works on Paper and 3-D

BLACK ART AUCTION WORKS ON PAPER &

3-D

BLACK ART AUCTION Saturday, July 11, 2020 at 12pm EST For more information on the works in this auction and to arrange absentee and phone bidding please contact us by phone at 317-986-6048 or by email at info@blackartauction.com.

Previews available by appointment, Zoom, or FaceTime, July 6th - July 10th.

We are located at 1497 N. Harding Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202.

Front cover: Lev T. Mills, I Back cover: Richmond BarthĂŠ, Feral Benga To download this catalog as a PDF, click the downward facing arrow at the top left corner of the box that encloses the catalog.

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Works on Paper & 3-D includes works by African American artists in various mediums other than a traditional oil painting. Watercolors, drawings in pencil, ink, and charcoal, collage, prints of various types, assemblage, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, photography and textiles are all represented. Many African American artists incorporated elements of the rich heritage of African crafts into their work.

Some artists are well-known for working in a particular medium, but explored alternative vehicles of expression that may not be as familiar to us all—but are interesting and effective—and bring an added level of admiration for the talent of these artists.

We suggest that you take this opportunity to not only explore the work of different artists, but also mediums to which you are unfamiliar. Some of the processes involved in creating these works are highly labor-intensive, and this supports the idea of a “multiple”. It is not simply a matter of making a work that is less expensive. Given what the artist had to do to create the image—including the costs involved—it would not be worthwhile to only make one. Many times within an edition , the individual works have slight differences, so they are truly unique anyway.

If you have questions about any of the mediums you see represented here or the process involved in creating a particular work, we encourage you to research and explore. Also, ask us!

This is an evolving document. Please keep checking back for new additions.

When the formal auction catalog goes live on Invaluable.com, this catalog will be referred to as the supplemental catalog.

Shipping Note: It is our goal to make shipping as safe and efficient as possible.

Many of the works in this sale are unframed, allowing us to safely ship these works to your door at a minimal expense – often around $100 – and allows the buyer to have it framed to their liking. Some works are nicely framed and behind glass and we can recommend a number of third party shippers who are capable of packing and shipping those safely. For the handful of larger lots in this sale we are happy to work with the third party shipper of your choice to make this as effortless as possible.

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DERRICK ADAMS (B. 1970)

The artist in a promotional photograph for his show, Derrick Adams: Network, held March 1 - July 7, 2017 at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles

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Holding Court and Countess N and Lizaveta Ivanovna Suite of two prints on hotpress Edition B, (18 in the edition) 15.28” x 11.5” Printed by Andre Ribuoli Housed in a portfolio accompanied by the text of the story Signed and numbered

Provenance: Gift from the artist to Revolution Books, Harlem. All proceeds of the sale benefit R.B., and independent bookstore coping with the challenges of the pandemic. $2000-3000 Created in response to Alexander Pushkin’s story, The Queen of Spades,the images enter into a dialogue raised by issues of the author’s African ancestry as well as the fascination of the story itself. Entitled Holding Court and Countess N and Lizaveta Ivanovna, Adams’ new prints reference the two female characters in Pushkin’s magical tale.

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EMMA AMOS (1938-2020) Amos studied at Antioch College (Ohio), London Central School of Art, and New York University. While still a graduate student, Amos became affiliated with Spiral.

Amos worked in painting, printmaking and weaving.

First Try at Elizabeth’s is a (highly developed) study for a hand painted stencil work, Emma Amos at Elizabeth Catlett’s, 2006 (collection of Yale University Art Gallery).

Both images relate to a series Amos created between 1990-1994; a series of forty-eight watercolor portraits of women in the art world. The image reveals two concerns that played a role in the artist’s life: relationships with people close to her and skin color: We’re always talking about color, but colors are also skin colors, and the term colored itself—it all means something else to me. You have to choose, as a black artist, what to make your figures…I find that I almost never paint white people. Butterscotch, brown, or really black—but rarely white. White artists never have to choose…

(REF: Gumbo Ya Ya, An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, intro by Leslie King-Hammond, 1995) Photo: Becket Logan/Courtesy Ryan Lee

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First Try at Elizabeth’s, 2006

watercolor on paper 12 x 12 inches signed, titled, and dated $4,000-6,000

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BENNY ANDREWS (1930-2006) 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 large-scale 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 which originated at Tate Modern, London, UK and traveled to several venues within the United States.

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Dreamers, 1976 etching 20-3/4 x 13-3/4 inches (image) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 34/50

Phyllis and the Church, 1976

$700-900

$700-900

etching 20-3/4 x 13-3/4 inches (image) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 32/47

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MASON ARCHIE (20TH CENTURY) Mason Archie was the 2007 recipient of the Creative Renewal Fellowship from The Art Council of Indianapolis/Lily 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.

Professional Affiliations: 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, Dayton Visual Artist Center.

Photo: diasporalrythyms.org; On the Road: DR Visits Indianapolis Artists, Sandra McCollum, September 20, 2017.

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Keep Us Safe, 2017 Etching 23-1/2 x 17-1/4 inches Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 5/30 $1,000-2,000

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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, 1800-1969, 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.

Arnold produced a series of works with a T.V. theme, creating an abstract composition with the letters and “filling the letters with wavy lines that he found so beguiling when the television was off focus . Building on his earlier interest in hidden signifiers and continuing his fascination with the role of mass media in shaping public opinion, the T.V. Series uses what initially seems like formally rigorous and entirely abstract art to simultaneously comment on the role of television in daily life.”

(REF: The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold, Art, Identity, and Politics, Greg Foster-Rice, p. 43.)

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The Telly “T”, 1971 colored etching 15 x 20-3/4 inches (image) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 45/65 Provenance: The Estate of Kathlyn “Elaine” Moragne.

Ms. Moragne grew up near the Cabrini Green housing complex in Chicago. At a time when women, especially African American, experienced significant barriers to education, Elaine her BA in psychopathology from University of Illinois (1958) and her MS in clinical nutrition from Rush University. Throughout her life, Elaine demonstrated her commitment to the economic revitalization and cultural recognition of the Black community, spearheading the work of Southside bank, starting a radio station in Boston supporting the needs of minority residents, and serving on the Women’s Board of the Chicago Urban League.

She was involved with the South Side Community Art Center for 20 plus years, and supported the work of African American artists, both financially and in an administrative capacity. She helped establish the loaning program at the Art Institute of Chicago, allowing homeowners to borrow or rent certain works to display in their homes. We are indebted to Lisa Morange-Kayser, Elaine’s daughter, for providing this information $500-700

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WILLIAM ARTIS (1914-1977) Untitled, n.d.

Ceramic vase 15-1/2 x 9 x 5 inches Signed Provenance: The artist traded this vase for a painting by his friend, Jim Cantrell. William Artis was teaching at Chadron State College in Nebraska, and Cantrell was teaching at Sidney public school (NE); 1964-1966. Jim and Jeannette Cantrell.

A ceramic bowl by Artis is illustrated in American Negro Art, Cedric Dover, p. 158 $2,500-3,500

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Through the 1960s his ceramic jars, jugs, and vases seemed to reach upward, some from stemlike bases to bulbous bodies with conical lids. This movement toward stretching organic shapes may have been affirmed when Artis worked as an assistant to Claire Falkenstein and Piotr Kowalski at the International Sculpture Symposium at Long Beach State College in the summer and fall of 1965. (REF: St James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs; essay by Theresa Leininger-Miller, p. 23) Artis is very well known as a sculptor, but he did frequently execute ceramic vases as well throughout his career. This example is very indicative of studio ceramics in the United States in the mid 20th century.

Prominent African American 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.

William Artis turning a pot on the wheel, AfroAmerican Art & Craft, Judith Wragg Chase, 1971, p. 130.

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Richmond BarthĂŠ (1901-1989) Catalog note: The works Feral Benga and The Seeker come from the collection of Jerry Man-

pearl and Jan Goodman, Los Angeles. Mr. Manpearl is a real estate, civil rights, and civil litigation lawyer in the state of California. He received his B.A. from UC Berkeley and then his law degree at UCLA, where he met artists Samella Lewis, Ruth Waddy, and E.J. Montgomery. Samella Lewis first arrived in Southern California in 1966 and took a position teaching at Cal State Long Beach.

Two years later, she began working for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a coordinator of education, but she became disenfranchised with the institution and set out on her own, planning a combination of ambitious projects that would help change the landscape of African American art in the region.

First, she and Ruth Waddy published two books, Black Artists on Art (2 volumes, in 1969 and 1971). These books help connect working black artists across the country as well as familiarize the public with their work. Secondly, she formed the Museum of African American Art, now located at 4005 Crenshaw Blvd, in the Macy’s Building, Los Angeles, CA. Lewis opened a place called The Gallery on Redondo Blvd, and with the moral and financial support of her sister Millie, and a small group of friends, they opened the museum. The group was operating on a shoestring, and leaned on their friend, Jerry Manpearl, to act as their lawyer to help with these projects.

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The year was 1976, the same year Richmond Barthé arrived in Pasadena, with the entirety of his personal belongings: a television and a modeling table. Charles White and his wife had found him a small apartment. Barthé was an acquaintance of the actor/director Ivan Dixon, and Dixon introduced his friend to Samella Lewis shortly after his [Barthé’s] arrival in L.A. Two years later (1978), Dixon introduced Barthé to a co-worker, Nanette Turner, who decided to interview him and submit an article to the Inner City Cultural Center, who published a multicultural magazine of the arts.

Dixon was directing an episode of the television show, The Rockford Files, and upon hearing the story of Barthé and reading the article, actor James Garner (the star of the show), requested a meeting with the artist.

Barthé was involved in an issue of possible copyright infringement, as a collector wanted to reproduce two of his images—seemingly without permission. Within the circle of acquaintances, Jerry Manpearl was contacted to help the artist. Manpearl aided Barthé in properly copyrighting his images so they would not fall into the public domain, and set up a trust to protect the accounts of the artist. The trio of Lewis, Garner, and Manpearl turned the elderly artist’s life around. Once copyrighted, Garner funded the casting of editions of Barthé’s sculptures, under the supervision of the artist. The revenue from these sculptures, supplemented by financial support from Garner (Mr. Manpearl, stated in an interview that Garner put Barthé on his payroll for the remainder of the artist’s life) provided support for the artist.

Barthé celebrated his 81st birthday in 1982 on the set of The Rockford Files, and five years later, in 1987, The Museum of African American Art honored Barthé for his achievements in the art world.

Jerry Manpearl is the co-founder of the Paul Robeson Community Wellness Center in Los Angeles and 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, Manpearl has lent his services to many artists, including Elizabeth Catlett and Samella Lewis, both of whom, like Barthé, are represented in his collection.

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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989) Feral Benga, modeled in 1935, cast 1986 19 inches high not including marble base Signed, copyright 1986, A/P Provenance: Jerry Manpearl and Jan Goodman, Los Angeles, CA Illustrated: Barthé, His Life in Art, Samella Lewis, pp.94-95 Barthé, A Life in Sculpture, Margaret Rose Vendryes, p. 67 Vendryes writes, The summer of 1934 in Paris was a pivotal moment in Barthé’s life that included his initial encounter with Benga. Francois Benga was a Senegalese cabaret dancer cast in several roles on and off the stage. His flexibility and impish good looks landed him in the chorus line at the Folies Bergere under the show name Feral Benga. The pseudonym was fitting for the cunning and handsome young man who negotiated elite European and American circles with finesse.

Like [Josephine] Baker, Benga had an exotic and sexual persona that made him a sought-after companion among Bohemians during the 1930s and 1940s.

Within a few months after his return from Paris, Barthé combined postcard photographs and memory to re-create not only the look abut the seduction that was Benga’s dance. (pp. 65-66) $125,000-150,000

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BarthĂŠ and Jacob Lawrence registering at the Contemporary Negro Art exhibition, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1939

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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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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989) The Seeker, c. 1963/1986 bronze on a marble base 24-1/2 inches high signed and dated 86, AP

Provenance: Collection of Jerry Manpearl and Jan Goodman Literature: This work appears in an image in Barthé, A Life in Sculpture, Margaret Rose Vendryes, 2008; p. 172 and dated 1963.

This image is pictured in Samella Lewis’ Barthé, His Art in Life, 2009, p.20-21, dated 1965. $40,000-60,000 Vendryes writes about The Seeker, p. 173: Barthé also returned to modeling nudes, but unlike the sensual Feral Benga or erotic Stevedore ,the figures from this period are solemn to the point of sobriety. Barthé stayed true to the natural representation of the body while he searched for his muse.

The search led him deeper inside himself.

The Seeker came to Barthé 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 sea bottom”.

The Seeker is Barthé’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 proportion as the seven foot Watusi tribe,” which Barthé felt added sophistication. More satisfied than ever with his work, he pronounced this time of healing as “the most wonderful thing that has ever happened.”

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RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901-1989) Masai Warrior c. 1933/1986

bronze on a marble base 8-1/2 inches high signed, dated, and numbered 10/25 Literature: This work appears in an image in Barthé, A Life in Sculpture, Margaret Rose Vendryes, 2008; p. 166, and titled, African Man (in plaster). This image is pictured in Samella Lewis’ Barthé, His Art in Life, 2009, pp.96-97. $7,000-9,000

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Romare Bearden was born in 1912 in Charlotte, North Carolina, but raised largely in New York City. His parents were active participants in the Harlem Renaissance, (his mother was the New York editor of the Chicago Defender), which provided the artistic and intellectual foundation for him to emerge as an artist of genuine talent, versatility, and conviction. Bearden studied at New York University, the Art Students League with George Grosz, and Columbia University. He was involved with the earliest incarnation of the Harlem Artists Guild and Charles Alston’s 306 group. After serving with the army, he was able to travel to Paris and study at the Sorbonne. When he returned from his travel, his work became more abstract. His early Social Realist works gradually gave way to cubism in the mid 1940’s while he began exploring religious and mythological themes.

In the early 1960’s, Bearden joined the artist collective Spiral. He began making collages as “an attempt to redefine the image of man in terms of the black experience.” Bearden’s early collages were composed primarily of magazine and newspaper cuttings. Together with his Projections, which were enlarged photostatic copies of these collages, they mark a turning point in his career and received critical praise.

Bearden achieved success in a wide array of media and techniques, including watercolor, gouache, oil, drawing, monotype, and edition prints. He also made designs for record albums, costumes and stage sets, and book illustrations. Bearden opened Cinque Gallery with fellow artists Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow and was founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. His work is included in major public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. Recent exhibitions of his work include: Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary, showing from January 30, 2020 - May 1, 2020 at the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland College Park, MD; 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 is also part of the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983.

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Fortune Cover, 1968

color lithograph 34-1/2 x 23-1/4 inches signed in pencil Provenance: Phillip Siekman, Los Angeles. Mr Siekman was working as an editor of the magazine when this issue was produced, and the artist hand-signed a print of the cover for each editor. The only other version of this print that has sold (that we know of) was trimmed. It did not include the legend: “FORTUNE A Special Issue on Business and the Urbane Crisis� . $1,500-2,500

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Salome (John the Baptist), 1974

From the portfolio, The Prevalence of Ritual lithograph 40 x 32 inches Signed, dated, and numbered, P.R. III, 94/100 GG # 42 $5000-7000 For a series of prints called the Prevalence of Ritual, Bearden reconfigured age-old stories as allegories of modern life. In John the Baptist he drew on the biblical story of Salome, who had performed a dance for King Herod that so pleased him he offered to grant anything she might ask. At her mother’s urging the young girl requested the head of John the Baptist, who had spoken out against her mother’s marriage to the king. The mask-like heads of the figures in John the Baptist blend West African and Egyptian visual traditions with a narrative about vengeance and naïveté. (REF: Smithsonian American Art Museum)

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Three Women, Easter Sunday, 1979 color lithograph 20-1/4 x 15 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 24/300 GG #84 Literature: A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, Gail Geburd and Alex Rosenberg, 1992; p. 19. $4,000-6,000

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Troy (Burning of Troy, The Fall of Troy) from the Odysseus Suite, 1979

color serigraph 18 x 24 inches signed and numbered 82/125 GG# 63

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA Literature: A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, Gail Geburd and Alex Rosenberg, 1992; p. 60 $3,000-5,000 In this series of prints, the artist creates a bridge between classical mythology and African American culture. The subjects, he argues, are timeless and point to the universality of the human condition. It is the story of a traveler’s search for a way home. Bearden approached this theme of The Odyssey in various mediums in the 1970s. In Homer’s tale, Odysseus is no longer seeking victory in battle but a reunion with family and a homecoming. Bearden realties the story to a

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Cattle of the Sun God (from the Odysseus Suite), 1979 color serigraph 18-1/4 x 22-1/4 inches signed and numbered 121/125 GG# 64

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA Literature: A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, Gail Geburd and Alex Rosenberg, 1992; p. 61 $2,500-3,500

historical timeline in African American history: the Middle Passage in the 17th-18th centuries, the survival of slavery until Emancipation at the end of the Civil War, the Great Migration, the struggles of Jim Crow, and finally, a restoration from exile to a place of dignity. (REF: Andrew Alexander, in a review of Black Odyssey, Carlos Museum, 2013).

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Sirens Song (from the Odysseus Suite), 1979

color serigraph 18 x 24 inches signed and numbered 119/125 GG# 66

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA Literature: A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, Gail Geburd and Alex Rosenberg, 1992; p. 63 $3,000-5,000

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Circe Into Swine (from the Odysseus Suite), 1979

color serigraph 18-5/8 x 23-1/2 inches signed and numbered GG# 65

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA Literature: A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker, Gail Geburd and Alex Rosenberg, 1992; p. 62 $3,000-5,000

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ROMARE BEARDEN (1911-1988) Before the First Whistle (Early Morning), 1973

color lithograph after, Before the First Whistle, 1970, collage 15-11/16 x 11-7/8 inches signed and numbered 13/50 GG#33 $3,000-5,000

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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 African-American and African culture together - incorporating sacred geometry and complex symbolic elements.

Biggers attended Hampton Institute (University) in the early 1940s, and befriended Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett. Much of his early work was social realist - depicting the everyday hard work and perseverance of the African American community.

In 1949, Biggers moved to Houston, TX and chaired the art department at Texas State University (later Texas Southern).

The artist yearned to penetrate the invisible but very real curtain which seemed to separate American blacks from Africans. For 15 years, he tried and failed to get fellowships to Africa.

Finally he made it in 1957, on a UNESCO grant which provided seven months of living and traveling through Ghana and western Nigeria.

“I had a magnificent sense of coming home, of belonging,” he says - and he doesn’t mean it sentimentally.

“I recognized at once the Africanisms in our life in America, which we simply had not been able to recognize and to claim,” Biggers asserts. The sight of African men and women building their own houses, hewing and shaping their own ax handles, weaving their own quilts, making their own chairs, impressed him deeply. “And it reminded me of my own childhood times in North Carolina.”

-Ann Holmes, It is Almost Genetic, The ARTGallery Magazine, April 1970, p. 38.

Biggers’ work may be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Atlanta University, GA; Barnett-Aden Collection, Washington D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Howard University, Washington D.C.; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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Dau Fuskie (The First Race Between the Turtle and the Hare), 1998

lithograph 10 x 13-3/4 inches signed and dated Printer’s Proof outside the edition of 200 $2,000-3,000

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JOHN BIGGERS (1924-2001) Our Grandmothers, 1994 Each lithograph is sold separately. lithograph on cream wove paper 24 x 18 inches (sheet) 33 x 26.75 inches (as framed) Signed and numbered 14/60 in pencil lower margin.

Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York. Printed to illustrate Dr. Maya Angelou’s poem Our Grandmothers.

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA $1,500-2,500 (each) Author Maya Angelou was invited to read a poem at the inauguration of President William J. Clinton in January 1993. Soon after that John Biggers was asked to create a special edition folio of lithographs to accompany Angelou’s poem, Our Grandmothers (1993). That commission offered an opportunity for Biggers to give form and synthesis to his desire to honor the grandmother, as the Great Mother, the spirit of “maame” . Said Biggers, “The enduring permanence of the Grandmother is a metaphor for immortality.” (REF: A Life on Paper, The Drawings and Lithographs of John Thomas Biggers, Olive Theisen, 2006; p. 117)

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MCARTHUR BINION (B. 1946) 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 minimalist abstract paintings, created using oil stick, crayons, and ink, and the foundation is usually a rigid surface, such as wood or aluminum—such as the examples offered here. 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. Depending on how long he lets the paint dry, it becomes more or less malleable, responding to his hand like pigmented, sculptural putty.

detail

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Untitled (Abstract), 1975 Oil stick and crayon on aluminum 13 x 19 inches signed and dated verso in crayon

Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $10,000-20,000

Untitled (Abstract), 1975

Oil stick and crayon on aluminum 19 x 13 inches artist orientation marks on verso in crayon Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI $10,000-20,000

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CALVIN BURNETT (1921-2007) Boston-based painter and printmaker. Burnett 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 and subjects and styles over the course of his career. Burnett worked on paintings for a considerable time, but working on several at once. He developed glaucoma in 1997 and had to quit painting.

The subject of these works comes from a humorous anecdote relating to Truth’s travels through Ohio and Indiana. Carrying six hundred copies of her book, Sojourner crisscrossed Ohio, speaking to crowds who did not care for her ideas. “I don’t care any more for your talk,” a farmer yelled at her, “than I do for the bite of a flea!” Sojourner just laughed at him. “Lord willing,” she said, “I’ll keep you scratchin.” (Sojourner Truth, Voice of Freedom, Kathleen Kudlinski, 2003.)

Photo: Bill Brett/Boston Globe Staff file, 1969.

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I’ll Keep You Scratchin’, 1983

mixed media on paper 60 x 40 inches signed and dated

Exhibited: Satiric Insights in the Art of Calvin Burnett: 1981-1993, Massachusetts College of Art, organized by Edmund Barry Gaither, September-November, 2008 $4,000-6,000 41

CALVIN BURNETT (1921-2007) I’ll Keep You Scratchin’,

color lithograph 29 x 20-3/8 inches signed

Printed by George Lockwood Impressions Workshop, Boston, MA (blind stamp) $2,000-3,000

42

CALVIN BURNETT (1921-2007) Marcus Garvey, 1964 lithograph 30 x 22-1/2 inches signed, titled, and dated AP $1,500-2,500

43

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.

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Masque, c. 1990 spirit markers on paperboard 25 x 20 inches signed, titled, and dated Provenance: Eleanor Chatman, Il. Eleanor was a close friend and regular traveling companion to Dr. Burroughs. $1,500-2,000

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010) Mahalia, 2010 lithograph 21 x 16-1/2 inches signed, titled, and dated 5/7/10 Provenance: Eleanor Chatman, Il. Eleanor was a close friend and regular traveling companion to Dr. Burroughs. $300-500

46

MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010) Girls With Braids, 1988

oil on board with applied stones and shells 30 x 24 inches signed and dated Provenance: Eleanor Chatman, Il. Eleanor was a close friend and regular traveling companion to Dr. Burroughs. $6,000-8,000

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MARGARET BURROUGHS (1917-2010) Mother Africa, 2008 lithograph 19-1/2 x 16-1/4 inches signed, titled, and dated $400-600

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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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Madonna, 1982 lithograph 22 x 16 inches (image) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 175/180 Literature: Elizabeth Catlett: Works on Paper, 1944-1992, Jeanne Zeidler, 1993; p. 62 $3,000-5,000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Sentando Niña, 1951

color lithograph on cream wove paper 9-1/2 x 7-1/2 inches (image) dated and inscribed, “ To Rosie with love Betty” $3,000-5,000

52

ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Harriet, c. 1975

linocut 12-7/16 x 10-1/8 inches (sheet) signed and numbered 41/60 in pencil lower margin $3,000-5,000

Catlett depicts great women from African-American history, including Harriet Tubman, who is shown here leading slaves to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Catlett’s continued support of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s is visible in the print completed after Malcolm X was shot and killed. It expresses Catlett’s enthusiasm for the leader’s successful efforts in inspiring pride in African-American women. (REF: Museum of Modern Art, New York, online)

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Irena, 2003 lithograph on cream wove paper 17 x 13 inches signed, titled, and dated AP I, outside an edition of 50 $1,500-2,500

54

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Playmates, 1992 color lithograph 17-1/2x 15 inches (image) signed, dated, and numbered 15/99 Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA From “For My People” a series of 6 color lithographs done by the artist to illustrate Margaret Walker’s poem of the same title; published by Limited Editions Club, NY. Literature: Elizabeth Catlett: Works on Paper, 1944-1992, Jeanne Zeidler, 1993; p. 45 $1,500-2,000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) A Second Generation, 1992

color lithograph on cream wove paper 17-1/2 x 15 inches (image) signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil lower margin Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA From “For My People” a series of 6 color lithographs done by the artist to illustrate Margaret Walker’s poem of the same title; published by Limited Editions Club, NY. $1,500-2,000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Singing Their Songs, 1992 color lithograph on cream wove paper 17 x 15 inches (image) signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil lower margin Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA From “For My People” a series of 6 color lithographs done by the artist to illustrate Margaret Walker’s poem of the same title; published by Limited Editions Club, NY. $1,500-2,000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) All the People, 1992 color lithograph on cream wove paper 17 x 15 inches signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil lower margin Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA From “For My People” a series of 6 color lithographs done by the artist to illustrate Margaret Walker’s poem of the same title; published by Limited Editions Club, NY. $1,500-2,000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) Walking Blindly, 1992

Color lithograph on cream wove paper 17-1/2 x 15 inches Signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil lower margin.

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA From “For My People” a series of 6 color lithographs done by the artist to illustrate Margaret Walker’s poem of the same title; published by Limited Editions Club, NY. $1,500-2,000

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012) To Marry, 1992 color lithograph on cream wove paper 17-1/2 x 15 inches signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil lower margin Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA From “For My People” a series of 6 color lithographs done by the artist to illustrate Margaret Walker’s poem of the same title; published by Limited Editions Club, NY. $1,500-2,000

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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. It is interesting to note that his first teacher at the AIC, Louis Ritman, introduced Clark to the work of Claude Monet, and Clark, upon first arriving in Paris, went to see Waterlilies at the Musée du Jeu de Paume, and the work had a significant effect on Clark.

Clark experimented with elliptical designs and both shaped canvases and painted, draped canvases. He was concerned with freeing the image concept from the limits of the canvas. (REF: Explorations in the City of Light: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-1965, Valerie Mercer, The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1996.)

Ed Clark at his home studio in Chelsea in 2014. Credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

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Untitled (Abstract), 1981-82 Dried pigments on paper 29-3/4 x 41-1/2 inches signed and dated Provenance: Private collection, Detroit, MI. $100,000-200,000

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IRENE CLARK (1927-1980) Painter, designer, and gallery director Irene Clark studied with the Art Institute of Chicago’s 414 Workshop, as well as at the San Francisco Art Institute. An accomplished realistic painter, Clark adopted an expressionistic, and later, naïve approach to painting, drawing particularly from folklore heard and read as a child.

I try to project in my work a universal (embracing or comprehending) feeling or mood. It is really a truly spiritual expression that I hope will be enjoyed by all viewers.

-Black Artists on Art, Volume 1; Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy, Contemporary Crafts, Inc. 1969, p. 10 Clark was a member of The African-American Historical and Cultural Society and gallery director of the Exhibit Gallery and Studio in Chicago. Her work is found in the collections of the Oakland Museum of Art, CA and Atlanta University.

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Sunflowers, c. 1950 mixed media on board 12 x 16 inches signed Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 159 $700-900

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ROBERT COLESCOTT (1925-2009) 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 an 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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I Can’t Dance, 1996 stone lithograph 25 x 18 inches (image) 30 x 22-1/4 inches (sheet) signed, titled, dated, and numbered 9/70 From the Resounding Heart Colophon, a set of eight lithographs published by Hand Graphics, Santa Fe, NM. $1,500-2,000

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ELDZIER CORTOR (1916-2015) 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.

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Composition II, c. 1955-58 Japanese woodblock print 14-1/2 x 22 inches signed, titled, and numbered 8/15 $3,500-5,500

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ALLAN ROHAN CRITE (1910-2007) Allan Rohan Crite was born in New Jersey and moved with his family to Boston as an infant. His interest in art was encouraged at an early age. He graduated from English High School in 1929 and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1936. Crite was one of the first artists to observe and depict average African Americans engaged in their daily activities, primarily in the South End, Cambridge and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. According to Crite, “I’ve only done one piece of work in my whole life..I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans. I tell the story of man through the black figure.” Crite rejected the images of artists like Archibald Motley, Jr. and Palmer Hayden because he felt they were inaccurate in their portrayal of African American life--at least, in that those images were universal symbols. He earned the title of “reporter-artist”, rendering his subjects and scenery with such fine detail they appear almost like color photographs.

Crite’s work is exhibited at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Lot of Two Works Boston Port Scene, 1925 watercolor on paper 6-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches Signed The Living Room, c. 1925 watercolor on paper 6-1/2 x 7 inches signed $1,800-2,000 Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 160.

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HARVEY CROPPER (1931-2012) Cropper was born in New York, and both of his West Indian parents worked in Harlem.

He studied at the Art Students League. Prior to that he was briefly, informally taught by Beauford Delaney (1947). In the mid-1950s, Cropper exchanged music/art lessons with Charlie Parker. In the early 1960s, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, and in 1964, he exhibited in 10 American Negro Artists Living and Working in Europe at Den Frie Udstilling in Copenhagen. This was an important exhibition for African American artists who had left the U.S. for greater freedom and artistic equality; among the ten were Beauford Delaney, Herb Gentry, Sam Middleton, Larry Potter, Walter Williams, and Norma Morgan. Much of his work centered around his beliefs in Japanese tradition and Zen.

Sam Middleton, Cliff Jackson, and Harvey Cropper in Stockholm, 1960. Sam Middleton Estate. Unidentified photographer; Š Sam Middleton Estate

Untitled (Severed Head), 1961 assemblage (oil, paint, and wood) 31 x 11 inches signed and dated $2,500-3,500

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Surrealist Female Figure, c. 1964 ink on paper 11-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches signed monogram $400-600 Provenance for both works: Doug Crutchfield (1938-1989), African American ballet dancer who resided in Denmark in the early 1960’s, opening his own studio at Vimmelskaftet in Copenhagen. He also taught in Sweden. He was a collector of African American art and friends with fellow African-American expatriates in Scandinavia.

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MARY REED DANIEL (B. 1946) Mary Reed Daniel was born in East St Louis, Illinois, a predominately African American community directly across the Mississippi River from St Louis, Missouri. Daniel studied at the Southern Illinois University, and also with Allen Lunak in Chicago. The majority of her work is done in watercolor and dye on paper, and focuses on the female figure. Her work was included in Choosing: An Exhibit of Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticisms by Black Americans 1925-1985 in 1986, presented by Phillip-Morris Companies, Inc., and in the catalog accompanying the exhibition, Daniel said “There is a reservoir of information that can be taken from the African-American lifestyle, and I am presently concerned with capturing this in my work.” (Dr. Jacqueline Fonvielle-Bontemps, Hampton University, p. 79; Daniel’s work is illustrated on this page). Daniel exhibited at Lincoln University, Atlanta University, South Side Community Art Center, Chicago,IL , DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, Il, and the University of Wisconsin.

She, along with Bill Daniel, Howard Mallory and José Williams started a gallery called 353 East on East 31st St in Chicago. In 1974, she showed with Sylvester Britton at the South Side Community Art Center.

REF: Black Dimensions in Contemporary American Art, J. Edward Atkinson, 1971, p. 47.

Gumbo Ya Ya Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, Leslie King-Hammond, 1995, pp. 62-63.

Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975, Rebecca Zorach, 2019, p. 46, 54.

Provenance: The Estate of Kathlyn “Elaine” Moragne. Ms. Moragne grew up near the Cabrini Green housing complex in Chicago. At a time when women, especially African American, experienced significant barriers to education, Elaine her BA in psychopathology from University of Illinois (1958) and her MS in clinical nutrition from Rush University. Throughout her life, Elaine demonstrated her commitment to the economic revitalization and cultural recognition of the Black community, spearheading the work of Southside bank, starting a radio station in Boston supporting the needs of minority residents, and serving on the Women’s Board of the Chicago Urban League.

She was involved with the South Side Community Art Center for 20 plus years, and supported the work of African American artists, both financially and in an administrative capacity. She helped establish the loaning program at the Art Institute of Chicago, allowing homeowners to borrow or rent certain works to display in their homes. We are indebted to Lisa Morange-Kayser, Elaine’s daughter, for providing this information.

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Untitled (Woman in a Flowered Dress), c. 1990 watercolor and dye on paper 8 x 5 inches signed $1,000-2,000

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WILLIS HOKE “BING� DAVIS (B. 1937) In my works I am concerned with taking a given medium and making a personal statement based on my perception, observations, and response to my environment.

Davis is a multi-media artist, creating ceramics, assemblages, photographs and collage. He studied at DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, Miami of Ohio in Oxford, OH, and also at Indiana State University in Terre Haute and the Dayton Art Institute. In the 1970s-1980s, he exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, University of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Purdue University, DePauw University, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, National Center for African American Artists, Boston, and the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, OH. REF: St James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs; Black Artists on Art, vol 2, Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy.

A ceramic vase by Davis is pictured in St James Guide to Black Artists, p. 132.

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Ceramic Vessel, 2008 13-1/2 inches high, 4 inches diameter signed and dated $1,000-2,000

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CHARLES DAWSON (1889-1981) Charles Dawson was born in Georgia, and attended the Tuskegee Institute. In 1907, he went to New York to continue his education at the Art Students League—and then on to Chicago to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. Dawson supported himself as a commercial artist in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, creating illustrations for beauty schools and Valmor Products, a beauty company with products marketed towards African American women headquartered on Chicago’s South Side.

Dawson was the only black artist to have a substantial role in the 1933–1934 Century of Progress Fair, when he received a commission for a mural illustrating the Great Migration for the National Urban League’s display in the Hall of Social Science. He also designed, produced, and self-published a children’s book titled, ABCs of Great Negroes. The book consists of 26 portraits of African American and African leaders with brief biographies on the facing pages. Dawson served as a curator of the Museum of Negro Art and Culture, and the George Washington Carver Museum at Tuskegee during the 1940s.

He exhibited alongside William Farrow, William Harper, and Archibald Motley, Jr. at the first Chicago exhibition of work by black artists at the Arts & Letters Society in 1917. Dawson founded the Chicago Art League, an early club for black artists.

Dawson’s forté was works painted in watercolor. Two of his watercolors included in the collection of the DuSable Museum of African-American History are reproduced in the book, Against the Odds: African-Artists and the Harmon Foundation, Gary Reynolds and Beryl Wright; The Newark Museum, 1989.

The Chicago Art League, c. 1927; Charles Dawson (seated first row, second from left.) Also William Edouard Scott (top row, center), Ellis Wilson (second row, left), and Richmond Barthé (second row, third from left). “‘White City’ and ‘Black Metropolis’: African American Painters in Chicago, 1893-1945.” Chicago Modern, 1893-1945: Pursuit of the New, by Elizabeth Kennedy et al., Terra Museum of American Art, 2004, pp. 45–46.

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Southern Scene, c. 1940 watercolor on paper 20-1/2 x 25 inches signed Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 45; Selections From the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 69

$3,000-5,000

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AVEL DeKNIGHT (1921-1996) In our world of pristine, hard-edged materialism to encounter an artist of such unabashedly romantic temperament as Avel de Knight is a palliative experience. When persuaded to divulge the secret dreams that spark the “nether-world” landscapes of his work, de Knight rather matter-of-factly reveals his romance with the Past—from which one may glean the most pleasurable of memories—and his pre-occupation with the Future—which is idealized in its yet unrealized state.

For him the Present is but a time and space for which one can reminisce and search for the Ideal. The object of this journey is by necessity elusive, and one constantly strives and yet never quite attains it. We might be tempted to view this pursuit as perverse and even masochistic, but de Knight is quick to note that this Ideal, while ever elusive, does provide him with the means to rejuvenate his love of and belief in beauty. This sustains him through the more piquant unrelenting inescapable realities of the Present.

—Lowery Sims, former Associate Curator of 20th Century Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Director, Studio Museum in Harlem, from Myths and Mirage, The Art of Avel de Knight, catalog accompanying the exhibition, Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums, 2001.

De Knight studied at the Pratt Institute form 1941-42 before serving in the U.S. Army (1943-45); he continued his study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris on the G.I. Bill.

He returned to the U.S. in 1956 and exhibited extensively, winning numerous awards. In 1967, his work, Mediterranean, was awarded the American Watercolor Society Prize, Grand Prize and Gold Medal for the Centennial Exhibition, and was acquired by the American Watercolor Society and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1988, the same watercolor was included in the exhibit, Faces and Figures: Selected Works by Black Artists (Met). De Knight later taught at the National Academy School of Fine Arts in New York.

De Knight’s medium of choice was watercolor, although he did also work in gouache and casein as well.

Photo: aveldeknight.net

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Untitled (Abstracted Landscape), c. 1960 watercolor on paper 11 x 9 inches signed $800-1,200

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JOSEPH DELANEY (1904-1991) Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1904, the younger brother of Beauford Delaney, Joseph Delaney moved to New York City in 1930 where he enrolled at the Art Student’s League. During the Great Depression, he painted many portraits on commission and was employed by the WPA. Beginning in 1931, Delaney became a regular exhibitor at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit where he offered portrait sketches executed during the event. His work shows a great love of New York City where he remained for 55 years capturing dynamic urban scenes and diverse figures depicted in a loose, exaggerated style.

In 1985, Delaney returned to Knoxville, where he was named artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee, until his death in 1991. His work can be found in the major collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Alain Locke Society, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and the Harlem State Office Building Art Collection, New York.

REF: Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, catalog for the exhibition: Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, 2004. Frederick Moffatt.

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A pair of figure studies, c. 1940 pen and ink on cardstock 7-1/2 x 5 inches each unsigned Aaron Galleries label verso Provenance: The estate of the artist to the estate of Kathlyn “Elaine” Moragne. Ms. Moragne grew up near the Cabrini Green housing complex in Chicago. At a time when women, especially African American, experienced significant barriers to education, Elaine her BA in psychopathology from University of Illinois (1958) and her MS in clinical nutrition from Rush University. Throughout her life, Elaine demonstrated her commitment to the economic revitalization and cultural recognition of the Black community, spearheading the work of Southside bank, starting a radio station in Boston supporting the needs of minority residents, and serving on the Women’s Board of the Chicago Urban League.

She was involved with the South Side Community Art Center for 20 plus years, and supported the work of African American artists, both financially and in an administrative capacity. She helped establish the loaning program at the Art Institute of Chicago, allowing homeowners to borrow or rent certain works to display in their homes. $600-800

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) 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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Sporty, n.d. mixed media collage on paper 12-1/2 x 9 inches signed $2, 500-3,500

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) Sewing Lesson, n.d. watercolor on paper 20 x 14 inches signed $2,000-3,000

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) Caribbean Woman, n.d. mixed media collage on paper 5-1/4 x 7-1/2 inches signed $1,500-2,500

JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) Untitled, n.d. mixed media collage on paper 8 x 7 inches signed $3,000-5,000

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) Seated Nude, n.d. mixed media collage on paper 32 x 20 inches signed $6,500-8,500

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JAMES DENMARK (B. 1936) Picking Flowers, n.d. watercolor on paper 24 x 18 inches signed $4,000-6,000

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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 works in collage and mixed media -oil paint, acrylic, egg tempera, gouache, ink, marker, and collage on paper and on canvas (stretched and unstretched). Prof. Driskell has worked with the Experimental Printmaking Institute of Lafayette college and Raven Editions. The exhibition, Evolution: Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell, held in 2009 at the High Museum of Art, GA was the first exhibition to highlight his printwork.

Prof. Driskell’s work has recently been included in David Driskell: Artist & Scholar of the African American Experience, Oct. 2019 - Jan. 2020, Morris Museum of Art, GA; David Driskell: Resonance, Paintings 1965-2002, 2019, DC Moore Gallery, NY. His work may be seen now in the following 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, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020) Her Hat Was Her Halo, 2007 color woodcut 17 inches diameter signed, titled, dated, and numbered 19/40 $2,000-3,000

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DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020) Gabriel, 2018 color serigraph 31-1/2 x 23-1/2 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 12/60 $3,000-5,000 Gabriel is taken from the painting by Driskell of the same title, done in 1965. In Art: African American, Samella Lewis writes about the work: “In Gabriel, an earlier work, Driskell adhered to a similar geometric plan. It’s semiabstract forms are enriched with expressionistic effects that resemble modern graffiti.”

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Doorway

Angel of Peace

The Denial

The Denial

Down By the Brook

DAVID DRISKELL (1931-2020) Doorway Portfolio, 2008 12 color serigraphs on Rives BFK Paper 15-1/2 x 13-1/2 inches (full sheet) 7-3/4 x 6-1/2 (average size of images) signed, titled, dated and numbered 75/75 $12,000-15,000

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Pine Trees At Night

Round Trees

Temptation in the Garden

Tropical Girl

Forest Girl

Silence

Pond Iced Over

The Doorway Portfolio contains twelve serigraphs by David C. Driskell, and twelve pages of handset letterpress prose by Michael Alpert, all of which is housed in a blue portfolio.

The portfolio is in the collections of the Bates College Museum of Art, Maine; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

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MELVIN EDWARDS (B. 1937) JAYNE CORTEZ (1934-2012) Edwards and Cortez were married in 1975, and occasionally collaborated, with Edwards providing visual art to accompany Cortez’s poems or writings. This work features two poems by Cortez. Stockpiling comments on the decadence of a majority society, calling people to come forward and make a change, and addresses the pressure to conform. Deadly Radiation Blues criticizes the ecological devastation to which humans have subjected the planet.

Jayne Cortez was an African American poet, activist, and spoken-word performance artist. She was formerly the President of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Inc. and directed the film Yari Yari: Black Women Writers and the Future.

Mel Edwards is a sculptor and printmaker/painter.

Edwards was born in Houston and studied art at USC. He began an important series of sculptures titled Lynch Fragments in 1963, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. His works on paper typically incorporate similar imagery as his sculptures— bold black lines punctuate colorful, expressionist backgrounds.

REF: Camara Dia Holloway (Co-Director, ACRAH, Association for Critical Race Art History), writing about the lecture, Mel Edwards & Jayne Cortez, (Paul R. Jones Annual Lecture, University of Delaware, March 7, 2011)

Every now and then she would say about our mutual thinking: ‘Well, I can’t tell whether I got it from you, or you got it from me. I really can’t.’ And at a certain point it’s true. At the same time, there’s no way I could be the poet—the systems are too different. Jayne’s work was complex, dynamically and aesthetically, and it really corroborated for me that there was no problem—except for your own abilities—with using anything you wanted to use to develop your work, your ideas. So we just had a lot of—as we used to say—brotherly and sisterly things in common, in relation to creativity, which I really miss.

-Melvin Edwards, interview with Catherine Craft, Curator of Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX

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Untitled, 1998 mixed media diptych 21-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches (each sheet) signed, dated, and numbered 90/90 Provenance: The Collection of Evangeline J. Montgomery, Washington D.C. $700-900

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TOM FEELINGS (1933-2003) Tom Feelings, a native of Brooklyn, New York, attended the school of Visual Arts for two years and then joined the Air Force in 1953, working in London as a staff artist for the Graphics Division of the Third Air Force. In 1958, he created a weekly comic strip, Tommy Traveler in the World of Negro History, which ran in The New York Age, a Harlem-based newspaper.

Feelings traveled to Ghana and Guyana early in his career, and spent his time in both countries illustrating, teaching, and consulting. When he returned from his first trip to Africa, he began illustrating books with African and African-American themes.

To Be a Slave, a non-fiction children’s book written by Julius Lester and illustrated by Feelings, was chosen as the 1969 Newberry Honor Book. It was the first book of its kind to receive such an award. He illustrated twenty books in his career.

The School of Visual Arts recognized Feelings with its Outstanding Achievement Award in 1974.

He has received eight Certificates of Merit from The Society of Illustrators, along with a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant in 1982.

Feelings produced primarily drawings or understated watercolors of figurative subjects. While in Africa, he worked for Africa Review, established in 1971 as a journal discussing African politics, development and international affairs. When in the United States, Feelings exhibited at the Brooklyn Fulton Art Fair; Atlanta University; Morgan State College; Park Village Gallery, (solo); and the Market Place Gallery, NYC.

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Portrait of a Woman, c. 1970 mixed media on thin cream wove paper 11 x 10 inches signed Provenance: The estate of Lawrence Dorsey, New York; private collection, New York, 2008.

Exhibited: Legacy - Selections from the Lawrence Dorsey Art Collection, Salena Gallery, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, November 12 - December 18, 2007. $2,000-3,000

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FRANK FRAZIER (B. 1943) 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 medium. 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)

Untitled, 1986 colored screenprint on matte board 17 x 23 inches signed and dated AP $500-1,000

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Untitled, 1988 colored screenprint 26 x 20 inches signed, dated, and numbered 14/33 AP $500-1,000 101

IBIBIO FUNDI (B. 1929) also known as jo Austin God Bless American Enterprise, c.

1961-1965 four ink drawings matted and framed as one object 10 x 8 inches (each drawing) unsigned $250-350 …if I did speak about my art, I wanted the words to be natural and unaffected—spontaneous and not contrived. I wanted to speak in a language of my black peers, but the intellectuals (or pseudo-intellectuals) who dominated the art scene would have this unacceptable . Because of this conflict, I left the University and created my own world of phantasy. My work itself became my only statement, a silent parody on Western man’s most prize possession, the machine.

-Fundi in Black Artists on Art v. 1, Lewis/Waddy, 1969, p. 14

Fundi was born in Boston, but studied on the West Coast at the University of California and graduated in 1965 with distinction. She exhibited at the University of California, Berkeley; Oakland Art Museum, 1968, New Perspectives on Black Art; Mills College, California Black Craftsmen, 1970; San Jose College, 1969; Hartnell College, 1971. At the exhibition, New Perspectives on Black Art, which took place in 1968 at the Kaiser Center Gallery, Oakland Art Museum, Fundi voices her thoughts on art, as an explanation of why she participated there: They…spoke of their dual roles—social activists and cultural leaders of their twentieth century Black Renaissance, this revolutionary rebirth of joy and self-affirmation. It is good to be a part of a Great New Breed—a breed united in its efforts to replace the black man’s hopelessness, frustration and despair with new hope, new pride, and dignity. Art and life can never be divorced. As any black artist can tell you. Ask me.

-Gumbo Ya Ya, Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, Leslie King Hammond, 1995, p.80.

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Samella Lewis writes in African American Art and Artists, (p. 205) Ibibio Fundi builds provocative constructions using wooden blocks and industrial forms. In viewing Fundi’s Wooden Sketch for a Possible Non-Functioning Machine, one recognizes bits of familiar objects—a chair and table legs, wooden disks, and laminated shapes. The interplay of thick and thin, curvilinear and angular, open and congested spaces gives heightened interest to the piece. Composed of many dissimilar shapes, the construction achieves its unity through basic color application.

These drawings are a precursor of Fundi’s sculptural works for which she is known. She created two and three dimensional works in the abstract as criticisms of America’s preoccupation of getting further away from true human nature. She saw a misguided sense of priority in the country’s concerns and resource management. Her constructions, entirely absurd and non-functional, were, in her mind, as productive as building a spaceship or a new weapon for war.

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IBIBIO FUNDI (B. 1929) also known as jo Austin Untitled, c. 1960 pastel on paper 12 x 9 inches signed, Austin $250-350

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933) Insight 3, 1995 Assemblage of color relief and collagraph with acrylic, aluminum fasteners, and machine-sewn thread on die-cut paper mounted on plywood with artist designed cut-outs, constructed to hang either vertically or horizontally 63 x 36 x 2 inches signed, titled, and dated gallery label verso, Jaffe Baker Gallery, Boca Raton, FL $60,000-80,000

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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.

His works evolved as 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.

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By 1975, Gilliam began to create dynamic geometric collages influenced by Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In 1977, he produced 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 86. 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, now showing at the deYoung Museum, San Francisco, CA; Black: Color, Material, Concept, The 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.

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

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933) Knowing White, 1991 Acrylic on panel/assemblage 29 1/2” x 32 1/2” Signed, dated, and titled verso Provenance: Private collection, Tampa, FL $20,000-$30,000

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933) Lattice II, c.1987 Acrylic on thick paper 36� x 48� (note: this work is asymmetrical) Signed, titled, dated (indistinctly) in pencil, lower center Provenance: Private collection, Tampa, FL $20,000-$30,000

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SAM GILLIAM (B. 1933) Marathon, 2004 Acrylic/painted plywood assemblage 39” x 89” x 9” (note: this work is asymmetrical, three-dimensional, and adjustable on one side) Signed, titled and dated verso Provenance: Private collection, Tampa, FL $50,000-$70,000 112

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PHILLIP HAMPTON (1922-2016) Born in 1922 in Kansas City, Missouri, Phillip Hampton studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute. Throughout his career, he inspired, not only with his art, but with his teaching. He was an associate professor of art and design at Savannah State College between 1952 and 1969, and associate professor of painting and design at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville.

His work has been exhibited at Atlanta University, 1958; Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, 1959; National Watercolor and Print Competition, Knoxville, TN, 1964; Lincoln University, 1966; Beaux Arts Guild, Tuskegee Institute, AL, 1967(purchase award), A&M University, 1968; Savannah Art Association, 1969; Smith-Mason Gallery, Washington D.C., 1971. Most recently, he was featured in the exhibition African American Abstractions: St. Louis Connections at the St. Louis Art Museum, 2008; as well as an exhibition at the Regional Arts Commission Gallery in St. Louis, 2009.

Hampton continues to approach art from an analytical and scientific point of view, his work inspired by the self-imposed question, “What is reality and what makes reality real?”

Phillip Hampton has been devoted throughout his long artistic career to investigations of abstract form and its relationship with objects from the visible world. He sees reality as that which is perceived via our sense, and that which is cerebral—derived from dreams, experiences or ideas. The aggregate forms that emerge from both levels of reality unite in the artist’s… paintings. Hampton studies the techniques of the old masters, the art of life and the unique spatial qualities of Asian art, employing the spatial and formal systems in his work.

-New Acquisitions, Saint Louis Art Museum Magazine (Spring, 2000): 13: Print.

For more information on Phillip Hampton and his work please visit the following link: Phillip J. Hampton.

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Time Place Sensate, 1987 water media on Arches paper 43 x 37 inches signed, titled, and dated Provenance: The estate of the artist.

Literature: Phillip J. Hampton, p. 89. $3,000-5,000 A copy of the book, Phillip J. Hampton produced by Tyler Fine Art, 2017 accompanies this lot.

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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.

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.

One of Hardison’s best-known images is a sculpture of Sojourner Truth (1990), a gift given by NY Governor Cuomo to President Nelson Mandela.

(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 from the Old Taylor Series, Ingenious Americans painted plaster 8 inches x 3-3/4 x 5-1/2 inches signed and dated subject is identified by a label on the bottom $600-800

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ISAAC SCOTT HATHAWAY (1872-1967) Hathaway opened the Isaac Hathaway Art Company in a basement at 1234 U Street, in Washington, D.C. in 1910.

He made and sold small busts and ceramic items. Hathaway’s developments in ceramics led him to be labeled by his peers the “Dean of Negro Ceramics”. He moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1915, and taught at what would become University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. He made death masks and busts of various sizes of notable African Americans and sold them to individuals and schools across the country.

In 1937, he established the Ceramics Department at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He became good friends with George Washington Carver and the two experimented with the local clay. In 1946, Hathaway was chosen to design two half dollar coins for the mint, honoring two African Americans (Booker T. Washington and George W. Carver), thus becoming the first African American to design a coin - the subjects of which were the first two African Americans honored on a coin.

Photo: Isaac Scott Hathaway and George Washington Carver, Isaac Scott Hathaway (18741967), Sculptor, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, p. 13.

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Portrait of Frederick Douglass, 1932 painted plaster 7 inches diameter, 3-1/4 inches signed, titled, and dated Provenance: Private collection, Indianapolis, IN $1,000-2,000

Casting of George Washington Carver’s Hand, c. 1937

painted plaster 11 x 4-1/2 x 3-1/4 inches inscribed, George Washington Carver

Provenance: Private collection, Indianapolis, IN Exhibited and illustrated in Isaac Scott Hathaway (1874-1967), Sculptor, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, 1996, p. 25. $1,000-2,000

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AL HOLLINGSWORTH (1928-2000) Hollingsworth was born in Harlem to Barbadian immigrants.

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

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

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

Provenance: The Estate of Kathlyn “Elaine” Moragne. Ms. Moragne grew up near the Cabrini Green housing complex in Chicago. At a time when women, especially African American, experienced significant barriers to education, Elaine her BA in psychopathology from University of Illinois (1958) and her MS in clinical nutrition from Rush University. Throughout her life, Elaine demonstrated her commitment to the economic revitalization and cultural recognition of the Black community, spearheading the work of Southside bank, starting a radio station in Boston supporting the needs of minority residents, and serving on the Women’s Board of the Chicago Urban League.

She was involved with the South Side Community Art Center for 20 plus years, and supported the work of African American artists, both financially and in an administrative capacity. She helped establish the loaning program at the Art Institute of Chicago, allowing homeowners to borrow or rent certain works to display in their homes. We are indebted to Lisa Morange-Kayser, Elaine’s daughter, for providing this information.

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Family Tree, c. 1970 color lithograph 20 x 16 inches (image) signed, titled, and inscribed, Artist’s Proof Provenance: The estate of Kathlyn “Elaine” Moragne. $300-500

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CURLEE RAVEN HOLTON (B. 1951) Curlee Raven Holton’s name is synonymous with master print-making. He is not only an accomplished printmaker of his own work, he has worked with many important artists to achieve the highest quality product in their work. However, his own work is by no means strictly limited to prints, as seen here in this remarkable watercolor.

Holton earned his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in 1987 and his MFA in 1990 from Kent State University. He also received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to study at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop in NYC. His work has been included in more than 30 solo exhibitions and 75 group exhibitions internationally throughout his career.

Holton’s works are inspired by personal experiences, as well as broader historical, social, and political issues. (REF: African American Art Since 1950, The David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, 2012)

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Blues State of Mind, 2002 watercolor on paper 30 x 22 inches signed, titled, and dated $4,500-6,500

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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. Her mother, Lovie, moved from Mississippi to L.A. in 1945 and married Stepny Honeywood. Both her parents were elementary school teachers. Varnette 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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Double Dare, 1979 color screenprint 18 x 25 inches (image) signed, titled, and dated Provenance: The estate of Kathlyn “Elaine” Moragne. Ms. Moragne grew up near the Cabrini Green housing complex in Chicago. At a time when women, especially African American, experienced significant barriers to education, Elaine her BA in psychopathology from University of Illinois (1958) and her MS in clinical nutrition from Rush University. Throughout her life, Elaine demonstrated her commitment to the economic revitalization and cultural recognition of the Black community, spearheading the work of Southside bank, starting a radio station in Boston supporting the needs of minority residents, and serving on the Women’s Board of the Chicago Urban League.

She was involved with the South Side Community Art Center for 20 plus years, and supported the work of African American artists, both financially and in an administrative capacity. She helped establish the loaning program at the Art Institute of Chicago, allowing homeowners to borrow or rent certain works to display in their homes. We are indebted to Lisa Morange-Kayser, Elaine’s daughter, for providing this information. $600-800

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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010) Hearts Make Friends, 1986

color serigraph 18 x 24 inches (image) signed, titled, and dated in pencil $600-800

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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010) Like Father Like Son, 1988

color serigraph 30 x 22-1/2 inches (image) signed, titled, and dated in pencil $600-800

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VARNETTE HONEYWOOD (1950-2010) An Old Fashioned Dinner Party, 1986

color serigraph 18-1/4 x 22-1/4 inches signed, titled, and dated in pencil $600-800

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RAYMOND HOWELL (1950-2010) In order to really develop as a painter one must physically explore a direction. My idea was to experiment in painting through African forms. This meant going to Africa, the mother of all development.

Howell is an Oakland artist who works in various mediums.

Despite having no formal art training, he was very successful, and exhibited extensively: Boston Art Festival, Cape Cod Art Association, The Palace of the Legion of Honor, Gump’s San Francisco, Heritage Gallery, L.A., Los Angeles International Black Art Show, Black American Artists/71, Oakland Museum, and many other venues.

He won first prize in the First Superb Black Art Show, University of CA (1970) and for graphics at the Berkeley Art Festival (1968). His work is in the collection of the Oakland Art Museum, and the private collections of Nat King Cole and Zsa Zsa Gabor. (REF: Afro-American Artists, A Bio-bibliographical Directory, Theresa Dickason Cederholm, 1973. )

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Screenprint after The Brown Painting, c. 1969 color screenprint 31 x 20-1/4 inches signed and numbered 200 From the estate of Evangeline J. Montgomery, Washington D.C. The Brown Painting, oil, was photographed in Black Artists on Art, v. 1, Lewis, S and Ruth Waddy, p. 13 $600-800

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EARLIE HUDNALL, JR. (B. 1946) I chose to use the camera as a tool to document different aspects of life—who we are, what we do, how we live, what our communities look like. These various patterns are all interwoven like a quilt into important patterns of history.

Earlie Hudnall was born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His sense of community within his family and that of the African-American culture is what helped shape his work as an artist. Hudnall began photography while serving as a Marine in the Vietnam War in the 1960’s. In 1968, he relocated to Houston to attend Texas Southern University and received his BA in Art Education. There he found the encouragement to continue photographing his subject matter of the everyday for African-Americans in the South.

Hudnall made Houston his permanent home and has been working as the university photographer at Texas Southern University since 1990.

Hudnall is a board member for the Houston Center for Photography and an Executive Board member in the Texas Photographic Society. His work has been influential in the portrayal of the African-American community and culture. The director of Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 2017, Moonlight, mentioned Hudnall as visual inspiration on how the film should depict African-Americans both aesthetically and symbolically.

While Hudnall was teaching photography at the Galveston Art Center in 1993, he would journey through the Cedar Terrace housing project taking photographs. The subject of this photo asked him to take his picture thus becoming immortalized as Hip Hop Galveston.

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Hip Hop Galveston, 1993

silver gelatin print 18-1/2 x 15 inches signed verso

Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA. Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p.

66. $3,000-4,000

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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 African American heritage, Johnson and his siblings could have passed for white, but he remained firmly aligned with his African American heritage. In fact, the aim of his art was, according to him, 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 at the Worcester Art School in Boston, later relocating to the West Coast in 1915, where he studied at the A.W. Best School of Art and the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. He studied with Ralph Stackpole, as well as Benjamin Bufano, whose work influenced his artistic output greatly in the 1920’s. At this time, 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.

Johnson’s creative output increased dramatically 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 gouache drawings. He was employed by the California WPA, eventually becoming a supervisor, where his work took on a monumental scale. He created public sculptures such as a carved redwood organ screen for the California School of the Blind, and exterior low relief friezes and mosaic decorations for the San Francisco Maritime Museum.

Johnson also created sculptures for the Golden Gate International Exposition held in 1939 on Treasure Island.

In 1944 and 1949 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.

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Singing Saints,c. 1940 lithograph 12 x 9-1/2 inches signed and dated Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA. Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 173; Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Works in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 21. $5,000-7,000

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967) Sailing I,c. 1950 enamel on steel 13-1/2 x 16-1/2 inches signed Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA. Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 172; Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Works in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 45. $8,000-10,000

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967) Misery, 1941

glazed terra cotta on a recent wood base 7 x 5 x 2-3/4 inches signed and dated Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 176; Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Works in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art , Tyler Fine Art, 2019, p. 30-31. $10,000-15,000

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967) Untitled (Abstract), c. 1950 enamel on copper 9 x 12 inches signed verso

Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA

Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 174; Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Works in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, Tyler Fine Art, 2019, p. 48-49. $8,000-10,000

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967) Female Egyptian Head, 1940 glazed terra cotta 4 x 2-1/2 x 4 inches signed

Provenance: William Abbenseth to George Johnson to the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, San Francisco, CA Literature: Sargent Johnson American Modernist, Cat. 25, No. 19; Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Works in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, Tyler Fine Art, 2019, p. 24-25. The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, 177.

$30,000-40,000

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SARGENT JOHNSON (1888-1967) Mother and Child, c. 1950 black Oaxacan clay 7-1/2 x 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches signed Provenance: The artist donated this work to a fund raiser for People’s World newspaper in the 1940s. It was won in the fund raiser raffle by Pele De Lappe. Melvin Holmes then acquired the piece from De Lappe.

Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p. 175; Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Works in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, Tyler Fine Art, 2019, p. 56-57; In the Spirit of Resistance: African-American Modernists and the Mexican Muralist School, The American Federation of Arts, 1996, No. 58, p. 138.

Exhibited: African American Historical Society Show, 1982; In the Spirit of Resistance: African-American Modernists and the Mexican Muralist School, The American Federation of Arts, 1996 $15,000-20,000

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LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905-1988) 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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Ti Moun Avec Chapeau, 1949 charcoal and graphite on wove paper 16 x 12 inches signed and dated in pencil Provenance: The artist to private collection, NY $6,000-8,000

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Lois Mailou Jones painting plein air on the Seine, Paris.

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LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905-1988) A Shady Nook, Le Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, 1991 color screenprint 32 x 37 inches signed, titled, dated and numbered in pencil Artist’s Proof

Printed by Lou Stovall at the Workshop, Inc., Washington, D.C. $2,000-3,000

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CLIFF JOSEPH (B. 1922) Joseph depicts the transformation of the peaceful African into the angry African American, raised by the United States. The imagery of the flag and the symbolism of the eagle represent the country responsible for the individual’s upbringing. The divided images within the egg reveal that the outcome could go either way, but it is the eagle’s talon, it’s imagery closely related to war and violence, which divides the embryonic individual into disconcerted halves. The war in Vietnam and the violence against blacks during the civil rights movement surrounded the African American with hostility.

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Egg From the Eagle’s Nest, 1966

oil and collage on board 20 x 16 inches signed signed, titled, and dated Provenance: The artist

Exhibited: TCB: Taking Care of Business, Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Dorchester, MA, 1971 $10,000-20,000

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JOSEPH KERSEY (1908-1982) Kersey participated in the W.P.A. Federal Art Project in 1939, and exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago (1940-42), Library of Congress (1940), Howard University (1941), and Atlanta University (1942). His work is included in the collections of the Johnson Publishing Company (Chicago), Howard University, and the Smithsonian University. Kersey worked as a clerk in the Special Projects Department of the Illinois Department of Public Aid from 1953-1982.

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A Boy and His Dog, 1936

watercolor on paperboard 21 x 14-1/2 inches signed; signed, dated and inscribed Chicago verso $700-900

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OMAR LAMA (20th CENTURY) Omar Lama was born in Halls, Tennessee, and his parents migrated to the Bronzeville community of Chicago in 1945. Omar was interested in drawing at an early age, and received a scholarship from the R.R. Donnelley Printing Company for 2 years of study at the Junior School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1955). He studied commercial art at Dunbar High School in Chicago and studio art at Kennedy-King College and Chicago State University. Lama specialized in drawing, although he did paintings as well. He was a founding member of Africobra.

In May 1970, Omar Lama, a draftsman, came to an Africobra meeting. Jeff invited him mainly because Omar had reproductions of his work, and Jeff wanted to increase our ranks to ten.

Omar’s medium was pen and ink. He presented a black and white print of an exquisite drawing of the dancer Darlene Blackburn. —Wadsworth Jarrell. (The drawing mentioned was a different image of the same subject, pictured in The Art of Omar Lama, p. 30). Blackburn was, of course, a well-known modernist dancer and choreographer from Chicago.

(REF: The Art of Omar Lama, Black and White Master Drawings from 1966-2006, Yaounde Olu, 2014; Africobra Experimental Art Toward a School of Thought, Wadsworth Jarrell, 2020 .)

Darlene Blackburn

Members of Africobra (Omar Lama, middle) with neighborhood children, 1970; Africobra: Experimental Art Toward a School of Thought, Wadsworth Jarrell, 2020, p.2.

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Portrait of Darlene Blackburn, c. 1975

ink drawing on paper 14-1/2 x 11 inches signed $500-700

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CLAUDE LAWRENCE (B. 1944) Lawrence studied music in high school and in college at Roosevelt University in the mid-1960s. He made a living as a saxophonist after college until 1980. He was mostly self-taught, although he studied printmaking at the Printmaker’s Workshop in New York City from 1992-1993. He was living in Harlem in the late 1980s, attending gallery openings and networking. He met artists Fred Brown, Lorenzo Pace, Jack Whitten and Joe Overstreet. Bob Blackburn recruited him to the Printmakers Workshop after meeting Lawrence at an opening. From 1990-2010, he lived in places across the country and in Mexico City. He has lived in Chicago since 2010.

In 2013, three of his paintings were accepted into the permanent collection of the Parrish Art Museum in Southhampton, NY, and in.2014, three of his paintings were accepted into the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. His work is also in the collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem; African American Museum, Los Angeles; American Folk Art Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum; The National African American Museum, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Lawrence paints on canvas and on cold press watercolor paper.

In 2015, Gerald Peters Gallery in New York presented: Claude Lawrence: Beyond Improvisation.

Lawrence’s work has also been featured in exhibitons at Cinque Gallery, NY; East African Cultural Center, Philadelphia, PA; Montclair University, NJ; Parrish Art Museum, Southhampton, NY; Water Mill Museum, NY; Elaine Benson Gallery; East End Arts Council, Riverhead, NY; Great Neck Library, NY; Goat Alley Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY; Warren Street Gallery, Hudson, NY; Hugh Hill Gallery, Kent, CT; Works of Art Gallery, New York, NY; Museum of African-American Art, Los Angeles, CA.

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Dolls, 1993 pastel on paper 18 x 24 inches signed and dated $800-1,200

Abstract Composition, 2001

gouache on paper 20 x 24 inches signed and dated $800-1,200

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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 three-dimensional 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 re-discovered 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 Har-

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lem YMCA - his first publicized one man show. The Toussaint L’Ouverture series was also shown at the Manhattan headquarters of the Catholic Interracial 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.

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, is now on view at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA until April 26th of 2020. This show will continue from June 2-September 7, 2020 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. 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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When Lawrence was commissioned to execute a print to celebrate the United States’ bicentennial in 1976, he illustrated the March 7, 1965, march by unarmed protesters objecting to the denial of African Americans’ right to vote. The march began in Selma, Alabama, but before the 600 protestors could reach the state capital in Montgomery, law enforcement officials attacked them with clubs and tear gas as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge; Lawrence symbolized the malicious and brutal attack by including the vicious dog at the left edge of the scene. Two days later, with court protection, Martin Luther King Jr. led now 25,000 marchers to Montgomery.

Outraged by the barbarity of the civil rights struggle, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act later that year. REF: Cleveland Museum of Art.

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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000) Confrontation at the Bridge, 1975 color silkscreen on Strathmore paper 19-1/2 x 25-7/8 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered VI/L (deluxe edition) $6,000-8,000

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JACOB LAWRENCE (1917-2000) Genesis, 1989

one volume with 8 color silkscreens on handmade paper housed in a blue linen clamshell box 23-1/2 x 18-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches signed and numbered 308 in pencil on the colophon Published by the Limited Editions Club, NY. Provenance:The collection of Madeline Rabb, Chicago, Illinois $4,500-6,500

The silkscreens are bound to the book. They are not separate sheets.

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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 mid1940’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 Culture; Studio Museum in Harlem; and Whitney Museum of American Art. His work was featured in the recent exhibition, Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, held in 2015 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

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Untitled (Abstract), 1976 oil on paper 24 x 30 inches signed and dated $40,000-60,000

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SAMELLA LEWIS (B. 1924) The image, Creole Mules, was included in the 2002 exhibit at Scripps College, Samella Lewis: Paintings and Works on Paper, 1941-2000.

Over the course of a distinguished multi-faceted 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.

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Creole Mules, 1995 color serigraph 20 x 24-1/2 inches signed, titled, dated and numbered 6/60 $3,000-5,000

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JAMES LITTLE (B. 1952) Little’s work exemplifies “pure abstraction”, utilizing color, surface texture and the interaction between the elements of the composition. Little claims that the understanding of value in color is not unlike solving a mathematical equation, and similarly, the rationality becomes the subject and its solution results in a satisfactory effect. Little grew up in Memphis and studied at the Memphis Academy of Art (BFA, 1974) and Syracuse University (MFA, 1976). Little creates his own pigments and ironically, his highly-disciplined compositions actually allow the viewer the freedom of introspection and interpretation.

Little works in New York currently and has exhibited extensively and his work is included in numerous museums and important private collections.

Little in his studio at the Memphis Academy of Art, 1973/Photo

by Nancy Bundy.

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Study for Black is Brown and Yellow, 1979 gouache and polymer on Arches paper 17 x 26 inches signed and dated 2-79 verso

Provenance: The estate of C. Arnold Hart $1,500-2,500

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LLOYD MCNEILL, jr (B. 1935) Lloyd McNeill is active in various mediums and as a musician. Working primarily in Washington, D.C., he studied at Morehouse College, Howard University (MFA) and the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He exhibited at Howard University, Barnett-Aden Gallery, Spelman College and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He exhibited at the controversial Contemporary Black Artists in America (1971) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and 25 Years of African American Art at the The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1994.

When I hear music, I visualize colors. Blinking neon lights evoke musical pitches. The music of John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy (with whom I studied), Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk impels me to create in any one of several areas and encourages me on to completion‌ I believe music to be the most expedient of the arts in finding the way to the human heart.

-Lloyd McNeill, Where More Than Beauty Traces Logic, The Common Ground, International Review of African American Art, vol 14, no. 1, p. 35.

REF: Art in Washington and Its Afro-American Presence, 1940-1970, Keith Morrison.

Artist photo: Sonia Meunier

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Jazz, 1990 pastel on brown paper 26-1/2 x 19 inches signed and dated Provenance: Private collection, NY $4,000-6,000

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RICHARD MAYHEW (B. 1924) Richard Mayhew was born in 1924 to parents of African American and Native American descent. He was educated at the Art Students League, NY; Brooklyn Museum Art School; and Pratt University, as well as receiving a degree in art history at Columbia University, NY. During this time, he studied under Edwin Dickinson, Reuben Tam, Hans Hofmann, and Max Beckmann.

Mayhew was one of the founding members of the group Spiral, formed in 1963 by Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff. The group worked to address issues of civil rights and racial inequality through art.

Mayhew’s first solo exhibition was held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1955 with a second solo exhibition held in 1957 at Morris Gallery, NY, both of which met with much critical success. His work has also been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Butler Institute of American Art, OH; High Museum of Art GA; and Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 2009, a retrospective of his work including paintings from the 1950’s through the 1970’s was held at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA. His work is found in the collections of Albion College, Michigan; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Evansville Museum, IN; Midtown Galleries, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

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Landscape for Bob, 2013 color serigraph 18 x 24 inches signed AP $1,500-2,000

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GERALDINE MCCULLOUGH (1922-2008) McCullough worked initially as an abstract painter, but in the early 1960s, she turned to sculpture.

She convinced her husband, a welder, to teach her the craft, and began creating welded metal sculpture works. Her sculpture, Phoenix, won the Widener Memorial Gold Medal in 1964 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (Stuart Davis had won the award for painting).

Her work combines several metals, some cast, some welded, into twisted organic and distorted shapes, vaguely figurative in subject. She finds inspiration from African and Pre-Columbian art, and the resulting image conveys a mystical quality.

McCullough graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago (MAE, 1955) and taught high school classes before joining the faculty of Rosary College, in River Forest, IL. REF: Three Generations of African American Women Sculptors: A Study in Paradox, the catalog accompanying the exhibition at the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, Philadelphia, 1996.

Her work is included in the Johnson Publishing Company collection, Chicago, Howard University, and the Oakland Museum.

Suzanne Jackson in her studio, photo from Ebony magazine, June 1964.

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Clown With Atomic Toy, 1965 cast bronze and welded sculpture 55-1/2 x 21 x 24 inches $6,000-8,000 This work is listed among titles by the artist in Afro-American Artists, A Bio-bibliographical Directory, Theresa Dickason Cederholm, 1973.

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LEV T. MILLS (B. 1940) 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.

-Lev T. Mills

I’m Funky But Clean, 1972 color serigraph 30 x 22 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 22/50 $1,500-2,000 Illustrated: Black Art: A Cultural History, Richard J. Powell, p. 143.

African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis, p. 268.

Samella Lewis: The serigraph, I’m Funky But Clean, a highly decorative work, shows the architectural boldness of his design. It shows the sincerity of Mills’ psychological insight into the spirit of the contemporary young African American male.

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Lev Mills’ collagraph, “I…” was selected as a competitor in the Third National Printmakers Exhibition. One juror was Warrington Colescott, a professor of drawing and printmaking while Mills was an MFA student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The print was selected as a “1970 Purchase Award” for the Ackland Museum on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Symbolically, the print encompasses a “capital I” and a “big eye.” The viewer is challenged to determine the significance of the symbols found throughout the print. Typically, Mills' works express action through words and images. Graffiti is a powerful expression of the unheard and is often used in his works.

In over a dozen exhibitions, Mills' works gained international recognition at a private gallery, Kunsthandel K276, in Amsterdam; the American Embassy in London and the American Cultural Center in Paris. Subsequently, the United States Information Agency (U.S.I.A.) sponsored Mills on a “Seven Month Exhibition and Lecture Tour” to East, West, North and Southern Africa as well as to the Middle East.

Thank you to Lev and Joyce Mills for providing information about this powerful image.

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LEV T. MILLS (B. 1938) I, 1970 collagraph 30 x 22 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 2/25 $1,500-2,000

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (B. 1933)

Sanctuary, n.d.

epson ink dye-sub on polychiffon 57 x 95 inches signed and titled verso described by the artist verso $5,000-7,000

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (B. 1933) Surface, c. 1972 etched enamel on copper 11 x 7 inches signed and titled verso original frame $3,000-5,000 My first meeting with Sargent Johnson was early in 1967 at Julian Richardson’s Black bookstore. It was there that we sat and talked about Black artists and what they were doing. He began sharing some of his memories as an artist active over a long period in the San Francisco Bay Area. At a later meeting he shared technical information on porcelain enamels, knowing this was a great interest of mine...

-Evangeline Montgomery, Sargent Johnson: Retrospective, catalog to the exhibition she curated for the Oakland Museum in 1971

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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 (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.

Photo: The artist, 1973; Oakland Post Photograph Collection, MS 169, African American Museum and Library at Oakland, Oakland Public Library. Oakland, California.

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Homage to Ruth Waddy, 2005

digital print 19-1/2 x 27 inches signed, titled, and dated AP $600-800

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (B. 1933) Decorated Vase, n.d.

Navy blue and brown geometric pattern over speckled brown glaze 4-1/2 inches high inititaled Provenance: The artist $200-300

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EVANGELINE MONTGOMERY (B. 1933) Two Handled Vessel, n.d.

Hand molded ceramic with mottle earth tone glaze over turquoise glaze 8 inches high initialed Provenance: The artist $350-450

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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.

Pajaud was appointed as an art director 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.

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Herons, 1993

watercolor on paper 26 x 36 inches signed and dated inscribed with the following dedication,To Kathleen with warm affection...good painting, Bill 4/93 $3,000-5,000

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ROSE PIPER (1917-2005) Rose Piper was born in New York in 1917, and spent nearly the entirety of her long and varied career there, beginning with her education at Hunter College (she was awarded a four year scholarship at Pratt Institute but her father believed Pratt was not really a college), and then at the Art Student’s League, studying under Vaclav Vytacil and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.

Piper was the recipient of two prestigious Rosenwald Fellowships (1946 and 1948) which allowed her to travel to Paris for further study, and the southern United States. Her first solo exhibition at the Roko Gallery (New York) featured the results of this travel, 14 paintings based on Negro folk songs and blues songs that she had researched. The success of this show led her to be included in the 7th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Negro Art sponsored by Atlanta University in 1948. Her painting, Grievin’ Hearted took first place and a cash prize of $300.

She also exhibited at the ACA Gallery, and ran in the circle of artists which included Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and a young Jacob Lawrence. Her later exhibitions include: New Images, Hudson Guild Art Gallery,1988; Contemporary African-American Artists, National Arts Club, New York, 1994; and The Fine Art of Textile Design, Cinque Gallery, New York, 1995; Bomani Gallery, San Francisco, 1993,1995.

An example of her work from the 1980s, Go Down Death, Easy (1988), appears in St James Guide to Black Artists, Thomas Riggs, 1997; (p. 424).

Piper was forced to cut short her career as a painter to focus on providing a stable income for her family. She became a successful textile designer and owned a greeting card company until her retirement in 1980 when she returned to painting. Throughout her career, her work has ranged stylistically from abstract expressionist to representational.

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Mexican Girl and Boy with Dog, c. 1950 mixed media with watercolor and crayon on paper 12 x 9 inches signed Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, San Francisco, CA Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, p.

184. $2,500-3,500

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CARL POPE (B. 1961) 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 socio-economic 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 officiallooking 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, “antisubject 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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Lot of four letterpress posters, c. 2007 letterpress on heavy cardstock 19 x 14 inches; 14 x 19 inches signed Provenance: The artist Literature: The Bad Air Smelled of Roses: Letterpress Posters by Carl Pope, Tyler Fine Art, 2014.

Exhibited: The Bad Air Smelled of Roses was recently on view in the exhibition WHO RU2 DAY: Mass Media and the Fine Art Print in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery through March 24, 2019.

Click here for a video showing the installation of the series at the Cleveland Museum of Art. $700-900 193

LARRY POTTER (1924-1966) Potter studied at the Art Students League in New York and the Cooper Union (1945-50). He exhibited at the Carnegie Institute of Art (1943), 10 American Negro Artists Living and Working in Europe at Den Frie Udstilling in Copenhagen (1964), American Art Gallery, Paris (1965).

He was featured in an exhibition in 1991 at the June Kelly Gallery: Paris 1961-1966, and also in Explorations in the City of Light: African American Artists in Paris, 1945-1965, organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem (1996).

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Sketch of a Studio, c. 1960 gouache on paper 11-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches signed

Provenance: Doug Crutchfield (1938-1989), African American ballet dancer who resided in Denmark in the early 1960’s, opening his own studio at Vimmelskaftet in Copenhagen. He also taught in Sweden. He was a collector of African American art and friends with fellow African-American expatriates in Scandinavia. $400-600

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MAVIS PUSEY (1928-2019) Mavis Pusey was best known for her hard-edge, nonrepresentational 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 viso 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. Her work will also be the subject of a major exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. 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.

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Untitled (Abstract), c. 1970 watercolor on paper 12-1/2 x 11-1/2 inches signed

Provenance: Private Collection, NY $6,500-8,500

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, Jr (1934-2002) 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. His sculpture Ghetto Merchant (1966) was pieced together from a destroyed cash 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.

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Fairbank’s or Garvey?, 1979

color screenprint 20 x 30 inches signed, titled, dated 12-79, and numbered 2/50 $2,000-4,000

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, Jr (1934-2002) Making Plans 1982 color serigraph 22 x 31 inches, 34 x 43.5 inches (as framed) Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 27/100 Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA $1,500-2,500

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, Jr (1934-2002) Carrying Out the Plan, 1982

color serigraph 32.5 x 22.5 inches, 38 x 25 inches (as framed) Signed, titled, dated, and numbered Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA $1,500-2,500

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, Jr (1934-2002) Change the Plan, 1982

color serigraph 32.5 x 22 inches, 42.5 x 32 inches (as framed) Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 16/100 Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA $1,500-2,500

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JOHN THOMAS RIDDLE, Jr (1934-2002) God’s Plan, 1982

color serigraph 38 x 25 inches Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 2/100 Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Lindley T. Smith, VA $1,500-2,500

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GREGORY RIDLEY, jr (1925-2004) Gregory Ridley was born in Smyrna, Georgia. In 1936, his family moved to Nashville. After a stint in the Navy, he enrolled at Fisk University, where he studied under Aaron Douglas, and the two became lifelong friends. Ridley also earned an undergraduate degree from Tennessee State University and a MFA from the University of Louisville.

Ridley accepted a teaching position at Alabama State University the same year he received his master’s degree (1951). Before retiring, he had taught at several southern universities as well as at City University New York.

Several works from Ridley’s Ngere Mask Series are displayed in the library at Fisk University.

Adhering to the philosophy of Alain Locke, by exploring African heritage and designs in contemporary African American art, Ridley executed both paintings and metal repoussé sculptures in this aesthetic.

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Taurus, 1997 copper repoussĂŠ on linen 6 x 5-1/4 inches Signed and dated $300-500

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JOHN ROZELLE (B.1944 ) Untitled, 1990

mixed media assemblage - painted wood, cord, stainless steel, found objects, and synthetic fur 24 x 16 x 12 inches signed $3,000-5,000

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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-inresidence 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, 1970-1990, 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 Post-Dispatch

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Slegs vir nie Blankes (Non-Europeans Only). 1987 Acrylic, fabric, photocopies, and shells on canvas 41� x 48�

Signed, dated, and titled verso $5,000-7,000 Photo left: Under Apartheid law, blacks and whites were required to ride on separate buses. This photo was taken in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1973. You can see the sign directly above the tire indicating this bus was for black people.

Image courtesy AP Images.

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BETYE SAAR (B.1926 ) Saar was born in Los Angeles, and moved with her family to Pasadena in the early 1930s. She first studied design at Pasadena City College and interior design at UCLA. This strong design-centered background would prove to be highly influential in her mature work in fine art. She was close friends with two other L.A. artists, Curtis Tann and William Pajaud.

Saar and Tann actually started an enamel design business which was featured in Ebony in 1951.

After graduating, from the late 50s through the mid-1960s, Saar was primarily interested in print-making, producing color etchings and intaglio prints. During the turmoil of the 1960s, the Watts riots, and the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Saar’s work began to shift to collage and assemblage, reclaiming and repurposing personal objects she inherited as well as negatively-charged objects she found at LA flea markets. She believed that a universality of international culture could be connected by reclaiming objects and artifacts from other cultures to be used in her own constructs of perspective. She was inspired further by a visit to a retrospective exhibition of Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967. Saar comments: There has been an apparent thread in my art that weaves from my early prints of the 1960s through later collages and assemblages and ties into the current installations.

I am intrigued with combining the remnants of memories, fragments of relics, and ordinary objects with the component of technology. It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously. The art itself becomes the bridge.

Saar exhibited extensively throughout the 1970s and on, including: Whitney Museum of American Art, NY;Wadsworth Athenaeum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Studio Museum in Harlem; MOCA, Los Angeles; University of Connecticut, Hartford; Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the National Gallery, Washington D.C. Her work is in numerous important public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum, NY; MOMA, NY; The Oakland Museum, CA; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA.

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HooDoo #7, 1992 mixed media 7 5/8” x 5 5/8” x 1/2” (Front & Back) signed, titled, and dated Provenance: The artist. The Evans-Tibbs Collection, Washington, DC. Estate of Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr., Washington, DC. Acquired from the above by current owner, Washington, DC, 1999. $8,000-12,000

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BETYE SAAR (B.1926 ) Bookmarks in the Pages of Life by Zora Neale Hurston, 2000 one volume with six serigraphs on handmade paper housed in a brown linen clamshell case 11-1/2 x 15-1/2 inches (one volume) signed and numbered in pencil on colophon page 120/300 Published by the Limited Editions Club, NY. This is not a print portfolio. The serigraphs are bound into the pages of the book.

Images include: The Conscience of the Court, Mother Catherine, Now You Cookin’ With Gas, High John de Conquer, The Bone of Contention, and Magnolia Flower Provenance: The collection of Madeline Rabb, Chicago, Illinois $2,500-3,500

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FRANK SMITH (B.1935 ) 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 pictures 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 nonfigurative into semi-abstracts…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. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/210709 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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New Uses For Nooses, 2011

multi-media collage of fabric and acrylic paint 25 x 39 inches signed, titled, and dated verso F. Smith stitched into a segment recto

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VINCENT SMITH (1929-2003) Brooklyn native Vincent Smith documented some of the most compelling events in 20th century America, from the jazz clubs of the New York avant garde music scene, to the burgeoning civil rights movement, and the Black Arts Movement. After a tumultuous youth, Smith found new direction in art, a vocation he completely immersed himself in, both as a student and as a working artist. He took classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and the Art Students League, NY. He traveled to Maine to study on scholarship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Smith drew inspiration from African-American artist Jacob Lawrence and was mentored by Lawrence and Romare Bearden.

His first solo show was held at the Brooklyn Museum Art School Gallery in 1955. He participated in numerous prestigious exhibits throughout his career, including at Roko Gallery (NYC), 1955; Market Place Gallery, Harlem, 1956-58; CORE (NYC), 1966; National Academy of Design, 1967; Studio Museum in Harlem, 1969 (one-man); Fisk University, 1970; Pratt Graphics Center, 197273; Brooklyn College, 1969; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1970; Illinois State University, 1971; Whitney Museum, 1971. Smith curated the show, Unbroken Circle: Exhibition of African-American Artists of the 1930’s and 1940’s, held at Kenkeleba House, NY in 1986.

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

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Untitled, 1968

watercolor on paper 12-1/2 x 18-1/2 inches signed and dated $2,000-3,000

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ALFRED JACKSON TYLER (1933-2011) I feel that because I am a Black Artist and because of my love for the human figure, I should illustrate the life and the chain of events associated with Black people…in this country but Africa and any other country where they may be indigenous.

-Black Artists on Art, vol.2; p. 79 Tyler attended Englewood High School on the South Side of Chicago, where so many important black artists started their careers— White, Cortor, Sebree, Motley, and others. His teacher suggested he attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he graduated from there in 1956. He also studied at the La Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Mexico City. He exhibited in Black Expression 69, the South Side Community Art Center’s traveling exhibit, as well as at Malcolm X Community College; University of Illinois; Du Sable Museum of African American History, Chicago, and many other venues. His work is included in the Johnson Publishing Company Collection, Chicago.

Mother and Child, n.d. etching 24 x 18 inches signed and numbered 14/100 $300-500

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Untitled, c. 1950

gouache on paper 13 x 10-1/2 inches signed nicely framed and matted $1,000-2,000 This work depicts young Tyler carrying his artist supplies past a group of people, presumably at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE Vase with incised decoration, c. 1950

ceramic, cream color background with olive green decoration 10-1/4 inches high signed Henre on the wall of the vase signed, Tuskegee Institute Pottery Literature: Alternative American Ceramics,1870-1955, Ken Forster, pp. 191-192. A copy of this book including the illustration of this vase accompanies the lot. $700-900 This is an important example of African American ceramics, and illustrates the “totally new concept in the field of African American higher education.”

In the 1930s, George Washington Carver, who was the Director of the Tuskegee Institute, recruited Isaac Scott Hathaway to develop a department of ceramics at the school. Hathaway taught at the School of Mechanical Industries and the School of Architecture. As a scientist, Carver was interested in the extraction of pigments from the Alabama red clay, and he and Hathaway worked closely together in the formulation of glazes for ceramic and pottery production. In the late 1940s, Hathaway moved on to the Alabama State College in Montgomery, and the ceramics program was taken over by William Daniel Southall (1952-1957). From 1953-1956, Donell Carter, prior to graduating from the Institute with a degree in engineering technology, was responsible for pottery casting and firing. In the 1950s, better, larger kilns were acquired and interest in the craft increased.

Booker T. Washington opened Tuskegee in 1881, under his belief that “vocational and instructional skills could produce economic gains, which, in turn, would be instrumental in the struggle to achieve political and civil rights.”

(Forster, p. 191)

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JAMES VANDERZEE (1886-1983) 1. NYC Parade, c. 1931; 8 x 10 in., inscribed verso, Cor 124th St. & 7th Avenue. $1,0002,000 2. 135th & Lenox Ave. NYC, c. 1920; sepia print 3-1/2 x 4-1/4 in. $1,000-2,000 3. Studio Portrait of a Violinist, c. 1933; sepia print, 9-1/8 x 6-7/8 in., Guarantee Photo Studio blind stamp. $1,000-2,000 4. Studio Portrait of Four Gentlemen at the Piano, 1934; 10 x 8 in., signed and dated.

Noted in pencil verso, Fred Tunstall, piano and Eubie (Blake) wants this. $1,000-2,000

James Van Der Zee 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 Der Zee image was equal part authentic pride of the sitter and equal part carefully constructed artifice—courtesy of the photographer.

5. Studio Portrait of Two Gentlemen at the Piano, 1948; 10 x 8 in., signed and dated. $1,000-2,000 6. Studio Portrait of an Elegant Gentleman, 1927; 10 x 8 in., signed and dated. $1,0002,000 7. Studio Portrait of Four Gentlemen, 1928; sepia print, 8 x 10 in, signed and dated. $600-800 *Price list card from GGG studio included.

In 1924, Van Der Zee was commissioned as the official photographer of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). It was Van Der Zee’s responsibility to not simply document the activities of Garvey and the movement, but portray them in a strictly positive light. Van Der Zee executed thousands of photographs of meetings and parades, some of which were made into a calendar.

8. Studio Portrait of Three Musicians, 1938; silver gelatin print, 8 x 10 in., signed and dated. $1,000-2,000 9. Lenox Ave, NYC, c. 1910; silver gelatin print, 5 x 7 in. $1,000-2,000

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.

This image, likely taken immediately preceding or during WWI, was either developed or remained in inventory for some time, as it is stamped verso, G.G.G. Photo Studio, 272 Lenox Ave. 10. Studio Portrait of a Woman With a Drum and a Man Balancing a Coronet, 1924; 8-1/2 x 5-3/4 in.,signed and dated. $1,000-2,000

For more information on these works please visit the following link: James VanDerZee (18861983): The Collection of Steven Yager.

Provenance: The Collection of Steven Yager, VA

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JAMES WELLS (1902-1993) Artist and educator, James Lesesne Wells was born in 1902 in Atlanta, Georgia and was raised largely in Florida. In a very auspicious beginning to a long career in the arts, the young Wells, at the age of 13, won first prize in painting and a second prize in woodworking at the Florida State Fair. He went on to study at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania for one year. Wells studied drawing with George Lawrence Nelson at the National Academy of Design. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York where he majored in art education.

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.

REF: A History of African American Artists From 1792 to the Present, Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, Pantheon Books, NY, 1993.

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Noah, c. 1930

woodcut 10-3/8 x 11-3/4 inches (image) signed, titled, and numbered 6/35 Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Dianne Whitfield-Locke and Dr. Carnell Locke, MD $1,500-2,000

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JAMES WELLS (1902-1993) Tales of Amadou Koumba, Burial of the Rut, c. 1930 woodcut 9-1/2 x 13 inches (image) signed, titled, and numbered 1/50

Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Dianne Whitfield-Locke and Dr. Carnell Locke, MD $1,500-2,000 Tales of Amadou, Koumba is a collection of tales from Sénégal, transcribed by Birago Diop from the accounts of his family’s griot, Amadou Koumba. It was published for the first time in 1947. This is one of the first significant attempts to put African oral literature into written form. With his compatriot Léopold Sédar Senghor, Diop was active in the Négritude movement in the 1930s, which sought a return to African cultural values.

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STANLEY WHITNEY (B. 1946) Whitney, a 1996 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, finds the whole notion of being typecast as an African-American artist offensive. “I am part of the mainstream of artists. If people do not know my work, it is not because of race. I agree with the critic Michael Chisholm, a New York art historian, when he says African-American art does not exist.”

Whitney is an abstract painter whose work is about using the structure of color and establishing a system of visual gestures using shapes. This [type] of work cloaks any racial references and stands alone as a representation of late 20th century abstraction.

Black Art Auction note: One might find it strange and borderline unjust to include Whitney’s work in a sale of exclusively African American art given his position. It would be ideal to not NEED to bring attention to race to make a point, but that argument parallels the the dilemma of Black Lives Matter vs “all lives matter”. Of course, any life matters, but that misses the point that the world NEEDS to be educated that BLACK LIVES MATTER. Implied in Whitney’s statement is the argument that his work is as significant as art done by a non-African American artist—which of course, it is, but the reality is that some people need to be educated on that topic. It is not a matter of his art being exceptional among exclusively African American artists—it’s exceptional among all artists. So much of history—including art history—is riddled with misinformation and exclusivity. One of the goals of Black Art Auction is to highlight the accomplishments of Black artists specifically. Additionally, much of the work of Black artists provides a more accurate portrayal of their life histories and celebrates the accomplishments of their Black subjects.

REF: The Chemistry of Color, African American Artists in Philadelphia 1970-1990, The Harold A. And Ann Sorgenti Collection of Contemporary African American Art (2005), p. 60.

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Untitled, 1998

drawing on handmade paper 12-1/2 x 17 inches signed and dated May 1998 $5,000-7,000

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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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Summer #2, 1974 woodcut on cotton batting 17-1/2 x 17-1/2 (full sheet) signed, dated, titled, and numbered 3/10, and inscribed Imp. Provenance: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, CA Literature: The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, Tyler Fine Art, 2019, p.198 $1,500-2,500

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HALE WOODRUFF (1900-1980) Hale Woodruff began his career studying at the John Herron Institute in Indianapolis. He had enjoyed some degree of success and exhibited frequently in Indianapolis and in Chicago by the time he won a Harmon Foundation prize in 1926. This award financed a trip to Paris. Woodruff was deeply influenced by the European modernists, especially Cézanne. He spent a great deal of time with the poet Countee Cullen and painter Palmer Hayden while in Paris. Cullen was there on a Guggenheim Fellowship and Hayden, a Harmon Foundation gold medal prize he won the year previously. Woodruff was encouraged to start a collection of African art by Alain Locke, who accompanied him to the Paris flea markets.

In 1931, Woodruff returned to the United States and began teaching art at Atlanta University. It was Woodruff who was responsible for that department’s frequent designation as the École des Beaux Arts of the black South in later years. As he excelled as chairman of the art department at Atlanta University, his reputation also grew as one of the most talented African-American artists of the Depression era.

Woodruff moved to New York in 1946, where he taught in the art department at New York University from 1947 until his retirement in 1968. During the mid-1960s Woodruff and fellow artist Romare Bearden were instrumental in starting Spiral, a collaboration of African-American artists working in New York. Woodruff’s New York works were greatly influenced by abstract expressionism and the painters of the New York School who were active during the late 1940s and 1950s.

Among his associates were Adolf Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock. Following a long and distinguished career that took him from Paris to New York via the Deep South, Woodruff died in New York in 1980.

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A Celestial Gate, 1977

color screenprint on Arches paper 18-3/4 x 21-1/2 inches signed, titled, dated, and numbered 106/190 $3,000-5,000 The Celestial Gate Series emerged at a time when African American artists were struggling with their identity and the form and content of their work. Woodruff combined layers of Abstract-Expressionist-derived style with Africanesque symbols to produce culturally familiar works that also have mass appeal.

-African American Art: The Long Struggle, Crystal Britton, p. 64.

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