Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Frank Bowling’

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA)

October 22, 2022–April 9, 2023

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA),

May 13 through September 10, 2023

In 1966, driven by the desire to expand the possibilities of painting, Frank Bowling (born 1934) ventured to New York City. It was his second move across the Atlantic—he had previously left British Guiana, his birthplace, for London in 1953. Over the next decade, during which New York was his primary residence, Bowling charted a journey of profound artistic discovery and self-determination. Debuting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Frank Bowling’s Americas delves for the first time into this pivotal early chapter of the boundary-crossing artist’s career. The exhibition brings together more than 30 of Bowling’s powerful paintings in the country of their making—including monumental, color-soaked canvases and rarely seen examples on loan from private collections. Following its presentation at the MFA from October 22, 2022 through April 9, 2023, Frank Bowling’s Americas will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), where it will be on view from May 13 through September 10, 2023.

Frank Bowling’s Americas is generously supported by the Abrams Foundation, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, and the Henry and Lois Foster Fund for Contemporary Exhibitions. Additional support from the Robert and Jane Burke Fund for Exhibitions, the Barbara Jane Anderson Fund, The Museum Council Special Exhibition Fund and The Amy and Jonathan Poorvu Fund for the Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Sculpture.

The exhibition is organized at the MFA by Reto Thüring, Beal Family Chair of Contemporary Art; Debra Lennard, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Contemporary Art; and consulting curator Akili Tommasino, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art at Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"To have an exhibition of this scale in the U.S. after so much time has passed is a real thrill. America gave me the freedom to make the art that I wanted to make and allowed me to forge my own path. It was incredibly liberating. It gives me a kick to see all these paintings together and be reminded of what an exciting place New York was for art and artists in the 1960s and 70s,” said Sir Frank.

In conjunction with Frank Bowling’s Americas, the MFA has launched a yearlong cross-institutional partnership with UMass Boston and Stony Brook University, New York, where in 1969 Bowling organized 5+1. The exhibition presented work by five African American artists with whom Bowling shared an interest in the possibilities of abstraction—Melvin Edwards, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Al Loving, Jack Whitten and William T. Williams—together with work by Bowling himself, the exhibition’s “plus one.” Despite raising still-resonant questions around representation, agency and discriminatory institutional structures, 5+1 remains under-discussed, with few materials available for further research. The MFA’s collaboration with undergraduate students at UMass Boston and doctorate researchers at Stony Brook explores the significance of 5+1 in 1969 and today through a digital project and satellite exhibitions at both universities opening in November 2022.

“The years during which New York was Bowling’s primary residence not only mark a chapter of astonishing innovation in his painting, but also active engagement with the vital debates among Black artists regarding forms their artistic practice should take, and where and how Black artists—long excluded from U.S. museums—should exhibit their work. It is also against this broader historical background that the meaning of Bowling’s work between 1966 and 1975 continues to resonate profoundly today” said Thüring.

Exhibition Overview

Bowling first visited New York City in 1961 and quickly made a habit of returning. Having decided to relocate there from London in 1966, he quickly immersed himself in an art scene centered on abstract expressionism and pop, beginning a dynamic dialogue with the painting he found there and imbuing his works with personal meaning and historical awareness. Working prolifically, he also engaged widely in sociopolitical issues: exhibiting, teaching, writing and contributing to surging debates over Black cultural identity and artistic practice. Honing a firm disregard for limits on his art, he forged new routes into abstraction and a commitment to continued renewal of painting that has continued to inform his work ever since. Exploring this transformative period in Bowling’s career, Frank Bowling’s Americas shows a view of modern art that exceeds narrow boundaries, shaped across continents and over oceans.

The exhibition is organized chronologically, beginning with pieces that anticipate Bowling’s move to the U.S. and his first years spent there. Works created in New York such as Palimpsest I - Mothers House DarkRedGreen (1966, courtesy the artist) are a departure from the figurative paintings he made while studying in London and reflect his movement toward a more abstract visual language that would increasingly become his focus.

In his first months after arriving in New York, Bowling began working with a map motif. At first, he painted land masses onto canvas by hand—most often, continents and countries of the southern hemisphere—but shortly switched to a more mechanical method by spray-painting over stencils made from readily available wall maps and atlases. Working with his canvas laid out on the floor, Bowling brought these spectral map shapes into conversation with fields of stained, splashed, drizzled and poured acrylic paint that take on oceanic qualities beside the land masses. Through 1971, Bowling used this evocative combination in a range of ways, culminating in epically proportioned canvases such as Night Journey (1969–70, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Penumbra (1970, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), whose surfaces claim for themselves the vast sweep of world maps.

Between 1969 and 1971, Bowling’s paintings shifted fully into abstraction. The expressive force of color was something he had explored for several years, but typically in combination with recognizable images drawn from his personal repertoire, as seen in the painting Mother’s House and Night Storm (1967, Collection of Sheldon Inwentash and Lynn Factor). During this transition, Bowling laid siege to these personal images—a “process of erasure,” as he described. A connection can be made between paintings from this period—such as Doughlah G.E.P. (1968–71, courtesy the artist)—and Bowling’s participation, since late 1968, in debates around the work Black visual artists should make during an especially charged moment in the Black struggle for freedom. Throughout his engagement, Bowling rejected the depiction of explicitly political content, forging instead a path into emphatic abstraction.

Bowling’s arrival in the U.S. during the summer of 1966 intersected with the rise of the Black Power movement. Rallying cries for African American pride—together with economic, political and cultural empowerment—galvanized discussion in creative communities, which Bowling participated in vocally. A section of the exhibition featuring archival materials and Bowling’s own writing outlines his wide-ranging engagements with debates around the shape and definition of Black artistic practice—including his friendships, teaching, participation in museum exhibitions (including Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston at the MFA in 1970) and organization of 5+1. Together, the materials on display illuminate Bowling’s questioning of representation, agency and institutional racial bias—issues that continue today.

The exhibition’s later works include Bowling’s monumental canvases divided into bands of subtly contrasting color. This series as a whole—including Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman (1968, Tate) and Looking at Barney & Mark (1972, Private Collection), which reference Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko—signals a definitive departure from a painting practice rooted in figuration. In the following years, Bowling began searching for ways to further challenge himself, experimenting with a new working method that involved pouring specially prepared, thinned acrylic paint down lengths of canvas. In these works, such as Suncrush (1976) from the MFA’s collection, Bowling made the act of pouring the basis of the whole composition.

Frank Bowling’s Americas ends with two recent works: 4 Bensusi (courtesy the artist) and Looking West Again (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Both created in 2020, the vibrant and poignant paintings demonstrate how Bowling, now in his 80s, revisits, alters and combines his historical painterly techniques while broaching new conceptual terrain.

Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by Frank Bowling’s Americas: New York, 1966–75, an illustrated catalogue produced by MFA Publications. The book reproduces more than 30 works, accompanied by curatorial essays and scholarly contributions by Reto Thüring, Kobena Mercer, Akili Tommasino, Sarah Roberts and Debra Lennard as well as statements by contemporary artists Firelei Báez, Melvin Edwards, and Julie Mehretu—inviting new ways of understanding the journey of an artist whose work has always remained in motion.

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Nellie Mae Rowe

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe Exploring themes of girlhood, play, and spirituality, the exhibition contextualizes Rowe’s practice as a radical act of self-expression and liberation for a Black woman artist in the Jim Crow–era South. Nellie Mae Rowe was a self-taught artist born in rural Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century. Discovering her passion for art-making early on, Rowe produced drawings and cloth dolls as a child. While the demands of her family farm, an early marriage, and decades of employment as a domestic laborer delayed Rowe’s artistic journey, she was able to return to her art after the deaths of her second husband and her longtime employers in the 1960s. As a result, Rowe produced an immersive, idiosyncratic, and exuberant body of work.

Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900–1982). What It Is, 1978–82. Crayon, colored pencil, pencil on paper, 21 × 21 1/4 in. (53.3 × 54 cm). High Museum of Art, gift of Judith Alexander, 2003.215. © 2022 Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo: Courtesy of the High Museum of Art)

On view at the Brooklyn Museum from September 2, 2022, to January 1, 2023, Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe situates Rowe’s highly personal body of work as a profoundly radical undertaking by a Black woman artist determined to create her own life and aesthetic in the Jim Crow–era South. Organized in eight sections, the exhibition features more than one hundred works emphasizing the breadth and importance of her practice in the American art canon. Incorporating everyday and often-recognizable materials into her assemblage, Rowe harnessed accessible means of production to assert her creative independence, recycling cast-offs to make handmade dolls and chewing gum sculptures.

Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900–1982). Untitled (Peace), 1978–82. Crayon and pen on paper, 17 × 14 in. (43.2 × 35.6 cm). High Museum of Art, gift of Judith Alexander, 2003.219. © 2022 Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Courtesy of the High Museum of Art.

The Brooklyn Museum presentation emphasizes the legacy of Rowe in New York City, which began with a solo show at the Parsons-Dreyfus Gallery in 1979. Three years later, Rowe’s drawings debuted at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the landmark exhibition Black Folk Art in America: 1930– 1980. In 1999, she was the subject of a retrospective at the American Folk Art Museum, which, along with the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and the Judith Alexander Foundation, has loaned works to this expanded presentation of Really Free, nearly doubling the size of the High Museum’s original exhibition. “Nellie Mae Rowe is one of the most important self-taught artists of the twentieth century, and we are proud to be able to introduce the depth of her creativity to our visitors and expand canonical ideas of art history and artistic value. Furthermore, this exhibition significantly builds on the Museum’s legacy as a champion of twentieth-century folk artists,” says Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. “The presentation offers a unique opportunity to examine Rowe’s legacy and impact through radical impulses that remain undoubtedly feminist.” Though Rowe rarely engaged with political topics directly, her work was shaped by the cultural, social, and political forces that defined her experience as a Black woman in the South. Subtle social commentary can be seen in selections such as Untitled (Pig on Expressway) (1980), a brightly colored scene centered on a brown pig that seems overwhelmed by the busy interlocking roads and highways. In this illustration of gentrification and urban sprawl, Rowe nods to the upheavals experienced by her community after Atlanta’s Interstate 285 was completed in 1969. Rowe remains an integral figure in the ethos of twentieth-century artists who created “yard art” and built environments.

In addition to Rowe’s autobiographical drawings, photomontages, and experimental sculptures, the exhibition features two miniature models of her “Playhouse.” The artist transformed her longtime home and yard into an extraordinarily built art environment. Reflecting her aesthetic of abundance, she filled pots and urns with plants, embellishing them with strands of artificial blooms; she positioned handmade dolls on chairs in her yard and strung garlands and clotheslines from tree branches, hanging them with Christmas ornaments, children’s toys, plastic fruit, and other items. The Playhouse became an ever-changing work of art that served as a place for social interaction among many curious visitors. Though it was demolished shortly after Rowe’s death, as her neighborhood succumbed to gentrification, the Playhouse’s legacy lives on in her drawings and in photographs taken by visitors, important examples of which are on view. Models of the Playhouse were created for a film about Rowe’s life, titled This World is Not My Own, produced and directed by Opendox and premiering in late 2022. 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052 718.501.6354

“Rowe’s artistic practice was fueled by a desire to reclaim creative visions that emerged during her Jim Crow–era childhood and to achieve self-liberation within the complex cultural climate of the post–civil rights era South,” says Jenée-Daria Strand, Curatorial Associate, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. “The act of a Black woman inviting people into her own home was a radical and brave one for its time. She was demanding to be seen on her own terms.” The Brooklyn Museum’s presentation is the largest in the national tour and the first showcase of Rowe’s oeuvre in the Northeast since 1999.

Further stops on the exhibition tour, funded by the Art Bridges Foundation, include the Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, Tennessee), California African American Museum (Los Angeles, California), Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, Alabama), and Lehigh University Art Galleries (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania).

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and curated by Dr. Katherine Jentleson, Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art, High Museum of Art. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, and Jenée-Daria Strand, Curatorial Associate, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Catalogue

Thursday, September 22, 2022

AFRICAN AMERICAN ART AT SWANN — OCTOBER 6

Swann Galleries’ Thursday, October 8 sale of African American Art offers a selection of the best in the genre as the house marks its 15th year of dedicated auctions to work by African American and Black artists. The fall 2022 sale will present a survey of American art history with art by Black artists ranging from Henry Ossawa Tanner at the turn of the nineteenth century through the current era with Chakaia Booker.

Headlining the auction is a bright and energetic 1967 abstract work in orange by Norman Lewis ($400,000-600,000). The oil on canvas comes from the late sixties period when Lewis created a series of paintings depicting abstracted jazz musicians—an important moment coming between his black and white Civil Rights and Klan images of the early to mid-1960s and the Sea Change series in the 1970s. Additional works by Lewis include an early oil on canvas from 1947 ($120,000-180,000), and Joiners, a 1954 watercolor and ink drawing ($30,000-40,000).

Further important works in abstraction from the 1960s to 1990s include Hale Woodruff’s Landscape, oil on canvas, 1967 ($150,000-250,000); Romare Bearden’s Wine Star, oil on canvas, 1959 ($150,000-250,000); Sam Gilliam’s Horses Upside Down, acrylic and polypropylene on canvas, 1998 ($120,00-180,000); Charles Alston’s Black and White #3 (Astral #3), oil on canvas, 1961 ($100,000-150,000); and Cliff Joseph’s Rise People Rise, oil on canvas, 1970 ($35,000-50,000).

Compounding on recent market recognition at Swann, a selection of tooled-leather paintings by Winfred Rembert includes The Book That Couldn’t Be Read, 2013 ($10,000-15,000), Winfred Rembert and Class of 1959, 1999 ($25,000-35,000), and Jeff’s Café & Room and Zeb’s Shoe Shine, 1998 ($25,000-35,000). Rembert’s 2021 biography, told by Erin I. Kelly, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South, recently won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Fabric-based artists on offer include Bisa Butler with Sea Island Woman, an intricate 2007 quilted work referencing the Gullah people of South Carolina ($40,000-60,000); Xenobia Bailey with Think, a 2008 hand-crocheted study for her MTA Hudson Yards work ($12,000-18,000); and Michael Cummings with Freedom, a 2013 quilted and appliqué depicting a civil rights worker singing for freedom with lyrics and quotations surrounding them ($12,000-18,000).

Modernist highlights include Westchester Graduation Ball, a 1951 brush-and-ink drawing by Jacob Lawrence ($50,000-75,000); Domestic Worker, a scarce print by Elizabeth Catlett, created at the Taller de Gráfica Popular upon her move to Mexico in 1946 and the first she printed there ($20,000-30,000); and Folk Singer, a 1957 print by Charles White, which reinterprets his iconic ink drawing from the same year, Folk Singer (Voices of Jericho: Portrait of Harry Belafonte) ($20,000-30,000). Sculptures from the era feature a marble carving by Marion Perkins ($30,000-40,000), and a significant welded steel sculpture by Harold Cousins ($30,000-40,000).

Also represented in the sale is a selection of photography with images made by James Van Der Zee, Anthony Barboza, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Carrie Mae Weems; figurative works by Joseph Delaney and Hughie Lee-Smith; assemblage artists Noah Purifoy and Betye Saar; and contemporary works by Chakaia Booker, Hank Willis Thomas, Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker among others.

Exhibition hours are 12 p.m to 5 p.m Saturday, October 1 and Monday, October 3 through Wednesday, October 5. Live online bidding platforms will be the Swann Galleries App, Invaluable, and Live Auctioneers. The complete catalogue and bidding information is available at www.swanngalleries.com and the Swann Galleries App.

The complete lot listing.

Image highlights can be found here.

Captions:

Lot 23: Elizabeth Catlett, Domestic Worker, lithograph, 1946. Estimate $20,000 to $30,000.

Lot 29: Marion Perkins, Untitled (Head of a King), carved marble, circa 1950-55. Estimate $30,000 to

$40,000.

Lot 31: Jacob Lawrence, Westchester Graduation Ball, brush and ink on paper, 1951. Estimate $50,000 to

$75,000.

Lot 34: Charles White, Folk Singer, linoleum cut, 1957. Estimate $20,000 to $30,000.

Lot 45: Romare Bearden, Wine Star, oil on canvas, 1959. Estimate $150,000 to $250,000.

Lot 48: Charles Alston, Black and White #3 (Astral #3), oil on canvas, 1961. Estimate $100,000 to

$150,000.

Lot 65: Norman Lewis, Untitled (Abstract in Orange), oil on canvas, 1967. Estimate $400,000 to $600,000.

Lot 66: Hale Woodruff, Landscape, oil on canvas, 1967. Estimate $150,000 to $250,000.

Lot 74: Cliff Joseph, Rise People Rise, oil on canvas, 1970. Estimate $35,000 to $50,000.

Lot 145: Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Makeup), silver print, 1990. Estimate

$6,000 to $9,000.

Lot 179: Winfred Rembert, Jeff’s Café & Pool Room and Zeb’s Shoe Shine, dye on carved and tooled

leather, 1998. Estimate $25,000 to $35,000.

Lot 188: Kara Walker, The Emancipation Approximation (Scene #26), color screenprint, 2000. Estimate

$15,000 to $25,000.

Lot 197: Bisa Butler, Sea Island Woman, quilted and appliquéd dyed fabric, 2007. Estimate $40,000 to

$60,000.

Lot 202: Xenobia Bailey, Think (Study for MTA Hudson Yards), hand-crocheted cotton and acrylic yarn on

canvas, 2008. Estimate $12,000 to $18,000.

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Ernie Barnes

Ernie Barnes (1938 - 2009), The Sugar Shack. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm.) Painted in 1976. Price realized: $15.2 million. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022.
Complete article

A masterful and dynamic painting from 1971 by Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) titled High Aspirations will lead the American Art sale on November 7 in New York. Estimated at $500,000 – 700,000, this work captures a moment of uninterruptable grace for the subject on the basketball court with Barnes mirroring the verticality of the leaping figure with a strikingly vertical canvas.

WANN GALLERIES | AFRICAN AMERICAN ART | APRIL 6

Ernie Barnes Leads Sale with ‘Daddy’ EST. $250,000 to $350,000

Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) The Gospel Truth, 1985. Estimate: £600,000 - 1,000,000. Photo: Bonhams.

The Gospel Truth, a masterwork by Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) leads Bonhams’ Post-War & Contemporary Art sale on Thursday 13 October in New Bond Street, London. The work has an estimate of £600,000-1,000,000.

Ralph Taylor, Bonhams Global Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, commented: “The gospel hall paintings of Ernie Barnes have become some of the most renowned and sought-after works by the artist, and The Gospel Truth is arguably the finest example to come onto the market. Barnes' life and career has received renewed recognition since his retrospective at the California African American Museum in 2019. We are particularly excited to offer The Gospel Truth given Bonhams’ recent successes in selling masterpieces by Barnes – having achieved an impressive $1,620,375 for his Solid Rock Congregation (1993) earlier this month at Bonhams New York. This follows on from the strong result for The Maestro – which featured on the album cover of The Crusader's Ghetto Blaster (1984) – and sold at Bonhams American Art sale for $882,375 in May.”

Barnes dedicated himself full-time to art following a career in professional football. He is known for elongated figures, capturing his observations of African American life growing up in North Carolina and living in Los Angeles. Barnes' work has appeared throughout pop culture on album covers, in television and movies. He was the official artist of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Purchased from the artist by Tim Hauser, eight-time Grammy winner and founder of The Manhattan Transfer, the present work conveys a musical passion shared between two masters of their craft. Hauser was introduced to Barnes’ work by the bassist Kenny Gradney of Little Feat, who also came up with the work’s title, The Gospel Truth. The painting was acquired fresh from Barnes' easel and would be a brightening focal point of Hauser’s collection. One of the most remarkable gospel canvases, it comes to the market for the first time since its making, full of unique details and qualities that make it one of the most inspired paintings by the artist.

Commenting on his relationship to sport and its impact on his practice, Barnes commented that "being an athlete helped me to formulate an analysis of movement, and movement is what I wanted to capture on canvas more than anything else.”


Ernie Barnes masterpiece to be offered at Bonhams New York on September 9


Solid Rock Congregation (1993), by Ernie Barnes (estimate: $500,000-700,000). Photo: Bonhams.
NEW YORK, NY.- A masterpiece by American artist Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) depicting a lively Sunday church service will hit the auction block this fall at Bonhams New York, following a summer tour to London and Los Angeles. A breakout star of the spring season, Barnes’ Solid Rock Congregation (1993) is another exemplary painting from his oeuvre depicting an energetic, multi-figure composition with strong emotional resonance. Barnes conveys the euphoric, rhythmic music deeply rooted in gospel churches of the American South, painting a Sunday morning church scene brimming with people singing, dancing, and playing instruments through his unique painting style capturing movement and passion. Estimated at $500,000 - 700,000, Solid Rock Congregation will be offered in a single lot live auction on September 9 in New York. The work has never been seen by the public before and has resided with American gospel singer Margaret Bell who commissioned the painting and is depicted in the work singing into the microphone. Ms. Bell was friends with Barnes after meeting him through the NFL that her then husband, Keith Byars, who like the artist played football in the NHL. After releasing a record with Warner Alliance Records in 1991, Ms. Bell recalls sitting in Barnes studio and him saying, “After hearing your voice Margaret, I can envision a wonderful piece, full of color, movement and music! If you commission me, I will create it for you!” Barnes dedicated himself full-time to art, after his professional football career, and became a leading 20th century artist. He is known for elongated figures, capturing his observations of African American life growing up in North Carolina and living in Los Angeles. Barnes’ work has appeared throughout pop culture on album covers, in television and movies, and he was the official artist of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Featured on the album cover of The Crusader’s Ghetto Blaster from 1984, Barnes’ painting The Maestro, was recently sold at Bonhams American Art sale for $882,375. “Following the success of The Maestro, Bonhams was pleased to learn about this unknown work that is clearly a masterpiece by the artist,” commented Andrew Huber, Senior Specialist and Head of Sale for Post-War & Contemporary Art at Bonhams New York, “and we are thrilled to show it to the public for the first time.” The work is currently on preview at Bonhams New Bond Street in London and will head to Bonhams Los Angeles on July 27, then reach its final stop at Bonhams New York starting September 1 and will be previewed alongside two contemporary art exhibitions from the Post-War & Contemporary department. Ernie Barnes, LATE NIGHT DJ, 1980.PHOTO JEFF MCLANE/COURTESY UTA ARTIST SPACE AND THE ERNIE BARNES ESTATE Ernie Barnes, Cool Quarterback, 1991.COURTESY THE ESTATE OF ERNIE BARNES, ANDREW KREPS GALLERY, AND ORTUZAR PROJECTS Ernie Barnes, Uptown, Downtown, Acrylic, Overall: 30 x 20in. (76.2 x 50.8cm), Courtesy of the Ernie Barnes Family Trust, Hollywood, California Ernie Barnes, The Critic's Corner, Acrylic, Overall: 24 x 36in. (61 x 91.4cm); framed 41 x 29 x 3 in., Courtesy of the Ernie Barnes Family Trust, Los Angeles, California Ernie Barnes, Lift Every Voice, Acrylic on canvas, Overall: 40 x 30in. (101.6 x 76.2cm), Courtesy of the Ernie Barnes Family Trust, Hollywood, California Ernie Barnes, Somewhere Else, Acrylic on canvas, Overall: 22 x 28in. (55.9 x 71.1cm), Courtesy of the Ernie Barnes Family Trust, Hollywood, California

Ernie Barnes (American, 1938-2009) Quintet, circa 1989 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 60 inches (91.4 x 152.4 cm) Signed low

Monday, April 11, 2022

Elizabeth Catlett

I Am a Black Woman: Elizabeth Catlett & Representation in Art

Elizabeth Catlett’s landmark contributions to twentieth-century art begin in the 1940s with a new representation of African American women. Catlett was the first Modern artist who centered her identity as an African American woman and artist in her work. By the 1960s, through her painting, sculpture and printmaking, Catlett had created a unique and important voice in Modern art.

Early-Life

Elizabeth Catlett was born in Washington, D.C. in 1915. She received her undergraduate degree from Howard University in 1937 with the goal of being an art teacher. Following her interest in the paintings of Grant Wood, Catlett decided to enroll in the University of Iowa — where Wood taught — and was one of three students to receive the first MFAs from the program in 1940, and the first African American woman to do so. After earning her MFA Catlett split her time teaching between Dillard University in New Orleans and summers in Chicago. Catlett’s modern development as an artist began shortly after this time in the early 1940s of New York.

The 1940s: Elizabeth Catlett’s Time in New York

Elizabeth Catlett, *Head of a Woman (Woman)*, oil on canvas, 1942-44. Sold in 2018 for $209,000.
Now in the Collection of the Metroplitan Museum of Art.

In 1942, Catlett moved to New York with her then-husband and fellow artist, Charles White, after their initial meeting in Chicago in 1941. Her first summer in New York, Catlett took private lessons and worked in the studio of the Russian modernist, Ossip Zadkine, who introduced her to the ideas of abstraction within sculpture. From 1944 to 1946, Catlett worked at the George Washington Carver School located in Harlem. There Catlett taught sculpture and sewing alongside White and other such artists as Gwendolyn Bennett, Ernest Crichlow and Norman Lewis. Actively teaching working class people in a progressive community school was an intimate experience that helped shape the social and political consciousness of her art. Her early oil painting Head of a Woman and stone sculpture Head reflect Catlett’s interest in both modernism and social realism.

The 1940s: Elizabeth Catlett’s Move to Mexico & Exploration of Printmaking

In 1946, upon winning a Julius Rosenwald Foundation Grant, Elizabeth Catlett left New York for Mexico City. There, between 1946 and 1947, she embarked on her monumental printmaking project, I am the Negro Woman series, while at the Taller de Grafica Popular. Catlett’s printmaking was inspired by the Mexican collaborative press and the political art it produced. For the first time, as Melanie Herzog writes, Catlett embedded herself in her artwork, as “through her naming, she transformed the artist/object relationship into one of profound identification,” inserting herself as an African American woman into a narrative whole.”1

Elizabeth Catlett, *My right is a future of equality with other Americans*, linoleum cut, 1947. Sold in 2016 for $11,250.

Catlett’s series of 15 linoleum cuts was exhibited in December of 1947 at the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC in her first solo exhibition — Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints of the Negro Woman. Also included were 11 paintings and four terracotta figures entitled Negro Woman, Tired, Cold, and Frustration. Her exhibition at the Black-owned gallery was a bold debut and a landmark in the history of African American art. The work presented illustrated a dynamic narrative of the shared identity and experience of African American women — Catlett’s women were everyday people who with rolled-up sleeves, persevered in the face of great obstacles.

Terracotta Sculpture

Elizabeth Catlett, Head, terracotta painted dark brown, 1947. Sold in 2013 for $173,000.

In her first full year of living in Mexico, Catlett also studied terracotta sculpture with Francisco Zuniga. That year she created the terracotta bust Head in which the inherent qualities of the medium help convey its beauty. This exquisite portrait of a young African American woman pays close attention to the surface of the hair and its rich color.

Sharecropper

The early 1950s continued to be an important period for Catlett — she continued to produce a large body of graphic work while also taking a break from sculpture to raise a young family. The artist would create her most recognizable work — the linoleum cut, Sharecropper. Catlett first exhibited this now iconic print during 1952 in Atlanta as Negro Woman.

Sharecropper was also titled Cosechadora de Algodón when her print was illustrated in the journal Artes de México in 1957. Catlett’s mastery of the medium enabled her to deftly imbue her subjects with a social and political consciousness. Sharecropper is a heroic portrait of a woman tenant farmer that conveys both strength and sensitivity.2

Elizabeth Catlett, Cosechadora de Algodón (Sharecropper), linoleum cut, circa 1952. Sold in 2018 for $27,500.

The 1950s: Focus on Natural Realism — Elizabeth Catlett’s Representation of Black Women

Elizabeth Catlett, *Untitled (Young Woman Looking Up)*, tempera on paper, mounted to board, 1954. At Auction March 31, 2022. Estimate $75,000 to $100,000.

Catlett’s mid-career work continued to evolve in its representation of African American women. The above attractive portrait of a modern, young woman is an unusually large and scarce mid-century painting. Despite the post-war movement towards abstraction, Catlett’s work remained centered around the figure. This painting demonstrates Catlett’s transition from angular modernism in the late 1940s to a more natural realism in the 1950s. The following year, Catlett also returned to sculpture.

Elizabeth Catlett, *Seated Woman*, carved mahogany, 1962. Sold in 2019 for $389,000.
Now in the Collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Catlett’s artistic representation of women reached new heights with her development of wood sculpture in the late 1950s. A significant contribution to wood carving, the above beautiful and complex mahogany sculpture demonstrates Catlett’s masterful technique and the work to follow. She first studied wood carving between 1955 and 1959 with sculptor, Jose L. Ruiz, at La Esmeralda in Mexico City. By 1962, Catlett had her first Mexican solo exhibition at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plàsticas, San Carlos, according to Melanie Herzog, where Catlett had become the first woman to teach sculpture in 1959. The same year, she also won the Tlatilco prize in Mexico’s first national sculpture biennial with her large-scale Figura, 1962, and became a Mexican citizen.3

The 1960s & Forward: An Amalgam of Social Realism & Modernism & Elizabeth Catlett’s Response to the Civil Rights Struggle

Elizabeth Catlett, Untitled (Civil Rights Protest), mixed media, 1974. Sold in 2019 for $118,750.

By 1960, Catlett’s artistry had transformed an amalgam of social realism and modernism into a unique aesthetic. She synthesized new techniques in both printmaking and sculpture inherited from her experience in Mexico. Her printmaking and sculpture would continue to evolve with her response to the Civil Rights struggle in the late 1960s. But her work would remain true to representing women, black women and herself.

African-American Art