Herman Kofi Bailey Vintage Black African American Figurative Lithograph Old 1972
POWERFUL VINTAGE AFRICAN AMERICAN LIMITED EDITION LITHOGRAPH BY RENOWNED AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTIST HERMAN KOFI BAILEY. TWO FIGURES EMERGE FROM AN URBAN BACKDROP ALIVE WITH SHADOWS AND LIGHT. THEIR FEATURES ARE SCULPTED WITH DIGNITY, REFLECTING THEMES OF STRUGGLE AND ENDURANCE. THE LITHOGRAPH'S MUTED TONAL RANGE, RENDERED IN RICH BLACKS AND GRAYS, AMPLIFIES THE EMOTIONAL RESONANCE AND CAPTURES THE ESSENCE OF SILENT COMMUNION BETWEEN THE SUBJECTS.
HERMAN KOFI BAILEY WAS A TRAILBLAZER IN AFRICAN AMERICAN ART, WHOSE WORK CELEBRATED BLACK IDENTITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE THROUGH SYMBOLIC AND FIGURATIVE EXPRESSION. HIS PIECES HAVE BEEN EXHIBITED IN MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS DEDICATED TO MID-CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN ART AND ARE REVERED FOR THEIR SOULFUL INTROSPECTION AND MASTERFUL TECHNIQUE. THIS WORK IS HAND SIGNED AND DATED 1972 BY HERMAN KOFI BAILEY. RARE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE DISCERNING COLLECTOR OF VINTAGE AFRICAN AMERICAN ART. DIMENSIONS INCLUDING THE FRAME: 24" H x 19" W.Kofi Bailey (1931 - 1981) was active/lived in Illinois, California, and Georgia. H Bailey is known for African-American figure painting and genre, lithographs. Herman "Kofi" Bailey also known as H. Kofi Bailey and Kofi X was an African-American artist. He was best known for his conté and charcoal drawings reflecting the African-American experience.
Bailey was influenced by artists such as Goya, Rico Lebrun, Jacob Lawrence, and Charles White. He described himself in 1967 as a "representational" artist rather than "abstract" because his work is committed to the masses who, he feels, want to see art that deals with man, art which tries to express the varying moods of man; and man is my principal concern. Bailey was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Los Angeles, California. He received his education from Alabama State College and then attended Howard University, where he studied under Alain Locke, Sterling Brown, and James A. He obtained his MFA at the University of Southern California.
He received commissions for large paintings and murals in Alabama as a student. He was described as a "black bohemian" at the time, often seen wearing a beret, talking jive, carrying a bottle "in one pocket" and talking about music and art.
While living in Atlanta, his studio was at the Institute of the Black World's second building. Bailey spoke with slurred speech, which was due to his heavy use of drugs and alcohol. While living in Ghana he served as an art teacher and the artist-in-residence to Nkrumah until the leader was deposed in 1966. Bailey also covered other areas of the African-American experience such as Black Power, anticolonialism, and African-American civil rights.
Black women and children often made frequent appearances as well. These socially aware and often politically charged artworks reflected the racism experienced by Africans and African Americans primarily in the 20th century. The stark contrast of the black inks or charcoals on white paper at times dramatizes the conflicts of blacks and whites. His work is commonly found in civil rights movement art and literature. While living in Atlanta he created posters for the H.Rap Brown Center, a venue that was frequented by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Eventually he would create posters for and serve as newsletter illustrator for the SNCC. After the Six-Day War, which Israel won, SNCC launched an anti-Zionist campaign featuring anti-Semitic images. Bailey created an illustration featuring an Israeli firing squad shooting a group of Arabs with a caption reading: "This is the Gaza Strip, Palestine, not Dachau, Germany". While some SNCC officers distanced themselves from the article and image, the SNCC's pro-Palestinian stand cut support from many Jewish organizations.
Bailey continued to create at times controversial comics for SNCC including depictions of Moshe Dayan, believed by some to be stereotyping of Jewish financial dominance and by others as showing the financial dependencies between the US and Israeli military's. The Palestine Problem, another comic by Bailey during this time, connects United States racial violence, military imperialism in Vietnam and the Arab world, and the Afro-Arab freedom struggle. Herman "Kofi" Bailey died in 1981 in Atlanta, Georgia.