FELRATH HINES
A PERSONALPURSUIT
SPANIERMAN MODERN
Felrath Hines
Photo Courtesy: Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Felrath Hines
A Personal Pursuit
November 15th, 2024 - February 15th, 2025
Felrath Hines in his Harlem, New York studio, 1951
Photo Copyright: N. Jay Jaffee
The exhibition title, APersonalPursuit, reflects Felrath Hines’s (1913-1993) view that art is an intimate form of expression, shaped by an artist’s vision rather than societal expectations or identity markers like race, gender or politics. As an African American artist in the twentieth century, Hines faced substantial pressure from his peers to incorporate political and cultural symbols into his work, transforming them into a tool for social commentary. Hines, however, strongly resisted being defined by his race or labeled as a “Black artist.” For him, it was essential that his art be evaluated on its formal qualities alone – on the strength of his exploration of color, shape, and form, rather than any association with racial identity.
After his parents moved as part of the Great Migration, Hines was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1913. At age thirteen he received a scholarship to the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, where he attended youth art classes on Saturdays. Despite Indiana being a part of the Union throughout the Civil War and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, discrimination was still prevalent, and the law was seldom enforced. The Jim Crow laws passed in Indiana allowed for racism to continue well into the mid-twentieth century.
Especially troubling was the discrimination that existed in education. Despite school segregation being prohibited in 1877, some communities created separate schools that encouraged Black students to attend in an effort to keep them out of the White schools. Notable institutions in Indiana were Lincoln High School, which opened in 1928 in Evansville, Roosevelt High School, which opened in 1930 in Gary, and Crispus Attucks High School, which opened in 1927 in Indianapolis. Hines attended Crispus Attucks and graduated in 1931.
After graduation, Hines worked as a firefighter for the Civilian Conservation Corps before he became a railroad dining car waiter for the Chicago Northwestern Railroad in 1940. This was one of the better paying jobs available to Black people at the time. Furthermore, it allowed Hines the opportunity to travel and escape the discrimination of Indiana while he saved up to attend art school. At 31, he decided to pursue art as a career and attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1944 to 1946. After the completion of his studies, Hines destroyed all of the works he had created as a student and left for New York City in 1946.
Felrath Hines
Photo Copyright: The N. Jay Jaffee Trust
When Hines arrived in New York, it was on the precipice of transitioning into the center for modern art because of Abstract Expressionism taking the world by storm. He attended Pratt Institute in 1948 and began to study privately with Nahum Tschacbasov, a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked in the figurative expressionist style. ThreeFigures,1947 and Totem,1950 are both examples of paintings from this formative period. These works reflect the early influence of cubism and figurative expressionism. Tschacbasov’s signature style was a lesser known art movement that blended elements of cubism and German expressionism. The key characteristics include figural distortion, indeterminate space, and color palettes that were not chosen to be reflective of the natural world, but to enhance the emotional significance of the work. ThreeFiguresdemonstrates Hines’ experience with the art of Picasso and his introduction to cubism. However, he found the sharp lines to be too restricting and Totem reflects his desire to experiment with a more improvisational style with looser applications of paint and less definable figures. Inspired by formalist aesthetic theories, he sought to flatten his images in order to emphasize the surface of the canvas.
Hines prioritized these theories because they excluded any social and political considerations from their aesthetic analyses. Modernist painting of the twentieth century was an entirely self-referential contained object. It utilized color and form to emphasize the process of creation, the employed materials, and, of course, the inherent flatness of the canvas itself. Hines refused to conform to the cultural and political demands placed on artists from racial backgrounds that were considered to be “Other.” He had no interest in participating in the stereotype of “Black art,” which was used to define artworks that explored one’s African roots and/or reflected on their experience as an African American in a White society. His strategic choice to produce abstract art and express the universal through the possibilities of form, color, and texture instead of depicting the expected African American subjects was demonstrative of his personal philosophy that artists should be free to explore different art styles regardless of any societal expectations.
Felrath’s emerging talent with color coincided with his career as a conservationist. In 1951 he began an unpaid internship with Robert M. Kulicke as a mat maker and framer at Kulicke’s shop on East Tenth Street. His close contact with the works of abstract expressionist artists continued to influence the works he produced. His style from the 1950s into the 1960s was characterized by a brushy, lyrical abstraction that was suggestive of landscapes or atmospheric elements. Prime examples of this can be found in Pond,1958 and Landscape,1963. Both compositions feature unidentifiable locations; this is because Hines did not use references and worked solely from his imagination. Both paintings are clearly referential to landscape painting, even if the only evidence of this is their titles. Despite the fact that these are neither real locations nor depicted in a realistic manner, the harmonious color palettes emphasize a universal feeling of nostalgia that one could relate to a locale from their own personal history.
Felrath Hines working on Monet'sWaterLilies, ca. 1960
Hines himself stated that by the early 1960s his ideas about making art were more or less set. His career in conservation was also established during this period. In 1962 he was appointed the Supervisory Conservator at NYU’s Fine Arts Conservation Laboratories, where he stayed until 1964. He then opened his own private practice, where his roster of clients included the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum. Additionally, he was commissioned to conserve works from the collections of his peers, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. The continued access to varying styles of art inspired Hines to pursue whatever aesthetic inquiries interested him.
The 1960s were also a crucial period for the Civil Rights Movement. Although Hines did not insert his political views into his art, he did still actively participate in the movement, including marching on Washington in 1963 and serving as a consultant for the Studio Museum in Harlem for their exhibition InvisibleAmericans:BlackArtistsofthe1930s, held in 1968. He was also a member of the African American artist collective Spiral (1963-1965) founded by Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Charles Alston, and Hale Woodruff. The New York-based collective met weekly at Bearden’s studio to discuss a plethora of ideas, including aesthetics, Black identities in a White art world, the role of abstraction in relation to social concerns, and the pressure to participate in social justice through art versus individual artistic freedom. The group often debated on the role and responsibility of the artist in the fight for social justice, yet they were unable to ever reach a consensus.
Spiral hosted only one exhibition in the summer of 1965 titled Spiral:FirstGroupShowing (WorksinBlackandWhite). All works in the show utilized a monochromatic palette of black and white as a metaphor for the issues they were discussing. The artwork Hines chose to include in the exhibition was FromDarktoLight,1964. The title of this painting was his only concession to any political meaning. Visually, the work has no ties to the credo of the Spiral group and the racial symbolism of the other included artworks. Instead, it explores the formal qualities of black and white values, while simultaneously suggesting a landscape. The group was disbanded in 1965 due to a raise in rent, as well as the strong differences in opinions amongst the members. Within the context of Spiral, Felrath publicly voiced his rejection of “Black art” for the first time. He declined participation in the Whitney Museum’s 1971 exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America because he did not want “to be placed in a special category with a particular group.” He wanted to be afforded the same privilege as White artists to depict whatever he wanted and focus on aesthetic problems instead of political problems in his artwork.
In 1972 Felrath Hines relocated to Washington, D.C. to take the position of Chief Paintings Conservator at the National Portrait Gallery and later at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. During this period, Hines developed a distinct artistic style, blending biomorphic forms with refined geometric abstractions. His works from this era reveal a meticulous focus on color, shape, and balance. Hines differentiated himself from other artists working in geometric abstraction with his unique and bold use of color. Different combinations and juxtapositions created subtle tensions between flatness and depth, adding complexity to otherwise simplified forms. A notable piece from this period Untitled (LargeGrays), 1971, exemplifies his sophisticated exploration of these visual dynamics. After retiring from conservation in 1984, Hines fully dedicated himself to his art, further refining his exploration of geometric abstraction with a focus on hard-edge and Color Field painting. His late-career works continued to emphasize spatial relationships between forms and how implied lines and color contrasts/values can evoke movement and dimension to create depth on a flat surface
Although Felrath Hines is today recognized for his success in conservation, his legacy as an artist remains under-recognized. This is attributable to his refusal to be pigeon-holed on the basis of his race, declining participation in exhibitions concentrated on African American artists. Yet the White-dominated art world had few other opportunities for Black artists to be exhibited and therefore he was not recognized in his lifetime for his achievements in abstraction. This exhibition, while not exhaustive, seeks to illuminate Hines’s innovative mastery of color, shape, and form throughout his career. Spanierman Modern is honored to represent the Estate of Felrath Hines and hopes to continue its efforts in educating the public on the life and career of this impressive artist.
ThreeFigures, 1947, Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Signed and
right
Totem, 1950, Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
StillLife, 1957, Oil on canvas, 6 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Pond,1958, Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches
Signed lower right
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
Flowers,1963-67, Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
Titled and dated on the verso
Landscape, 1963, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 inches Signed on the verso
Landscape, 1965, Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches Signed on the verso
BeigeGreen,1968, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
Untitled, ca. 1970, Oil on canvas, 26 x 40 inches
LandscapewithOchreStripe,1971-72, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches
Titled and dated on the verso
Untitled(LargeGrays), 1971, Oil on canvas, 66 x 78 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
#2Untitled,1971-72, Oil on canvas, 34 x 34 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
Untitled#2, 1978, Oil on linen, 46 x 48 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
Untitled, 1979, Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches
Pyramid, 1983, Oil on linen, 48 x 50 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
OvertheHill, 1984, Monotype on paper, 18 x 24 inches
Signed and dated upper right
FloatingRectangle, 1984, Oil on canvas, 26 x 39 inches Signed on the verso
Accent,1985, Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
TropicNight,1989, Oil on canvas, 26 x 26 inches
Signed on the verso
Mahler, 1992, Oil on canvas, 58 x 64 inches Signed, titled, and dated on the verso
Hines loved classical music, responding especially to the works of Gustav Mahler. When asked what attracted him to Gustav Mahler's music, Hines' response seems at odds with the control and clarity of his geometric abstractions: "I like the intenseness of his work. There are beautiful and romantic passages that go along with...thunder and lightning that's part of the expression." Yet in Mahler, his 1992 homage to the composer, Hines conveys the range of emotional and tonal colors characteristic of Mahler's symphonies in one of his most compositionally complex painting. In this work, straight lines, rigid rectilinear shapes, and vivid colors are contrasted with softer, undulating forms against a subtly hued background.
-Rachel Berenson Perry Author of The Life and Art of Felrath Hines: From Dark to Light
Felrath Hines, Mahler, 1992
Exhibition "It's About Time: The Artwork of Felrath Hines," June 22 - September 29, 2019
Photo Courtesy: Indiana State Museum
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