RARE Vintage African American Black VISION Portrait Lithograph, Charles WHITE
RARE Vintage African American Black VISION Portrait Lithograph on paper. By the renowned 20th century African - American figural artist and muralist, Charles Wilbert White 1918 - 1979.
The title of this artwork is Vision, originally created as an oil drawing by White, as the study for a more finalized, later piece titled Silent Song 1969. According to my research, the subject of this artwork was originally a woman or girl, such as in this particular print, titled Vision, but was subtly changed to a young boy by the time it was finally developed as Silent Song later on in the year. Depicts the shadowed portrait of a young woman lying in bed, with her eyes open and her face revealing a thoughtful and contemplative expression.
This piece is s igned and dated in plate : "Charles White'69" at the lower right edge of the circular printed area. This artwork was originally included in a portfolio of six offset lithographs by Charles White, titled I Have a Dream, and this particular lithograph was accompanied by a poem titled: " Harlem, " by Langston Hughes 1901 - 1967. The I Have a Dream portfolio was published in 1969 by Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, in a small and very limited edition. Pproximately 14 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches including frame. Actual artwork is approximately 14 x 17 inches. Very good condition for decades of age and storage, with moderate scuffing and edge wear to the original vintage period wood frame, and light speckles of soiling on the other side of the glass but not the print, and sprinkles of dust and debris under the frame, visible along the edges of the artwork please see all photos carefully. Acquired from an old estate collection in Los Angeles County, California. Charles White's artworks are on display in museums across the world, and in numerous public and private collections. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer.Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! "I Have a Dream Portfolio", 1969.
Portfolio of six offset lithographs on paper of drawings by the American artist known for his work chronicling African American-related subjects. Includes Seed of Heritage; I Have Seen Black Hands ; The Wall ; The Brother; Vision ; and Nat Turner, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. 14.25 x 20 inches 36.2 x 50.8 cm. White's work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
1979 - Los Angeles, California. Black-American figure and genre and mural painting. The following, submitted June 2005, is from Charlotte Sherman, exhibition catalogue biographer of the artist. Charles Wilbert White was an artist of his people.
He always insisted upon the dignity of the individual and respect for the human being. As a spiritual product of his race and environment, he reflected the fact that his grandfather was a slave in Mississippi and his mother had lived most of her life in the South, where little had changed from her father's day. His respect for men, women and children was apparent in this search for the meaning of truth in terms of the daily life and the beauty that can be found through his drawings, paintings and prints.A warm understanding of the meaning of existence, man's aspirations and sorrows, his inner spirit, but above all his dignity, form the central core of Charles White's love affair with life. He is quoted as saying, Paint is the only weapon that I have that which to fight what I resent.
If I could write, I would write about it. If I could talk, I would talk about it. Since I paint, I must paint about it. Charles White was born in 1918 in Chicago, where the family had migrated from the South. His parents were Ethel Gary and Charles White Sr.He lived and worked in his studio in Altadena, CA. For his last 20 years, until he died in Los Angeles in 1979.
His youth was spent in Chicago. His mother, a domestic worker, took young Charles to work with her. One day to keep him out of mischief she bought him a set of oil paints, which he then proceeded to use on the window shades. His earliest painting dates to when he was only seven years old.His solace in a difficult life was the drawing board, and he continued to paint and draw as much as possible. He entered a nationwide high-school contest and won first prize. Later he applied for a scholarship at the Art Institute of Chicago and was granted scholarship for full-time study.
After his studies, Charles White was able to work professionally with other artists with the WPA. In 1939 under the auspices of the W. He painted the mural, "Five Great American Negroes" for the Cleveland Branch of the Chicago Public Library.
This same years he exhibited at Howard University and received a commission from the Associate Negro Press to do the mural, "History of the Press" for the American Negro Exposition, Chicago. Now the artist was able to speak about the Negro heroes of American history and their contribution to American life. Painter, Charles White would show Booker T. Washington, educator; Frederick Douglass, statesman; George Washington Carver, scientist; and Marian Anderson, singer, on the same mural. His works of art are found in museums throughout the United States, Germany, Africa and Japan.A partial list includes: Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Howard University Museum; Atlanta University Museum; Oakland Museum; Tuskegee Institute. American Federation of the Arts; Academy of Arts and Letters; Hirshhorn Museum, Taller de Grafica, Mexico City; Deutsche Academy der Künste, Berlin; Dresden Museum of Art.
Sources: Benjamin Horowitz, "Images of Dignity, Drawings of Charles White", 1967; Sherman, Charlotte Sherman, "Charles White, Images of Dignity", exhibition catalogue, Bakersfield Museum of Art, February 26, 2004 - May 3, 2004. Biography from Phillips New York. Charles White's aspirational artworks chronicled the African American experience during the 20th century. White's work depicted American American life during the Civil Rights Struggle; he believed that art occupied a central position in the movement and worked to advance its ideals. He was particularly renowned for his use of printmaking and murals to reach a wider audience. White created what he called "images of dignity, " uplifting the African American community and making its history and struggles visible. White was born in Chicago in 1918 and attended the Art Institute of Chicago despite being rejected from several other art schools on the basis of his race. In addition to his work as a painter, White was also a gifted teacher and a leader in his community. After moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s, he took up a position teaching at the Otis Art Institute, where David Hammons, and Kerry James Marshall were among his students. Considered one of the leading figures of post-war black figuration, his oeuvre was celebrated in a major travelling retrospective in 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The Art Institute of Chicago. Biography from Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Charles White was born in Chicago and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1937-38), the Art Students League (1942), and Taller de Grafica in Mexico (1946). From 1939 to 1940, he worked as a mural painter for the Illinois Federal Arts Project. Inspired by Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Leopold Mendez, White initially gained recognition for his social realist murals documenting milestones in black history. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, White received two Rosenwald Fellowships in 1942 and 1943, which enabled him to travel throughout the South.In 1944, he was drafted into the United States Army, but was given medical discharge when he developed tuberculosis. By this time, White was well-known for his meticulous draftsmanship and in 1947, he had his first solo exhibition at the American Contemporary Art (ACA) Gallery in New York City. From the late 1940s onward, White? S drawings, paintings, and prints focused on African-American history and culture, and often depict ordinary men and women bearing difficult circumstances with dignity and calm.
Porter observed, White was one of the great voices among black Americans who [were] among the real interpreters of the American Negro. In 1972, White was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design, the second African-American artist to be appointed since Henry Ossawa Tanner. Towards the end of his life, White was weakened by respiratory insufficiency. However, he continued to work until his death at the age of sixty-one. In 2002, Pomegranate Press released Charles White, the first volume in The David C.
Driskell Series of African-American Art. Biography from The Johnson Collection. When interviewed about his art, Charles Wilbert White said: Paint is the only weapon that I have with which to fight what I resent. A painter, draftsman, and printmaker, White endeavored to marry his art to his beliefs.
Using the plight of African Americans as his subject, White's artwork speaks to the black experience in the United States. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Charles White's artistic gifts became evident in grade school when his teachers marked him as gifted with the paintbrush and the pencil. Although his home life was unstable and impoverished, White's single mother-a native Southerner who had migrated north- encouraged his talent, once bringing home a set of oil paints. Days spent at the Chicago Public Library (often in lieu of child care) nurtured White's love of reading and exposed him to the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
His youthful proficiency at drawing earned a scholarship to Saturday classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, where his instructors included Charles Sebree and Margaret Burroughs. White's high school years were problematic, a result, in part, of his nascent struggle against racism, but his talent was undeniable. In 1937, White received another scholarship to attend the Art Institute, one of the few schools open to black artists at that time.
After completing the Art Institute's two-year program in just twelve months, White joined the ranks of artists employed by the Works Progress Administration. He worked briefly in the easel division of the Illinois branch of the Federal Art Project before transferring to the mural department, where his colleagues included former assistants of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Under WPA auspices, White executed Five Great American Negroes, the first of many important murals he would create to honor key African American leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Marian Anderson, and George Washington Carver. This introduction to politically engaged public art left a lasting impact on White who strove to use his creativity for social justice. In the summer of 1941, White met Elizabeth Catlett while she was studying ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago. They married in December of that year and moved to New Orleans where Catlett was chair of the art department at Dillard University, and White obtained an appointment to teach drawing for one semester. A year later, White won a Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellowship; as part of the award's stipulations, the couple relocated to New York, and White joined the Art Students League's faculty. That fall, White and Catlett toured the South, an experience he would later recount as one of the most deeply shaking and educative experiences of my life. After traveling for over a year, White began work on a massive mural documenting African American history, The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy, at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia. As World War II raged on, White was drafted in 1944 and served as a corporal in the all-black 132nd Engineering Regiment for eight months before being diagnosed with and then honorably discharged for tuberculosis. During his extended convalescence, White spent the spring of 1945 as an artist-in-residence at Howard University in Washington, DC, an appointment that offered a lighter teaching load. When Elizabeth Catlett received her own Rosenwald fellowship in 1946, White followed her to Mexico.While she worked on a series centered on African American women, he was able to study directly with the muralists he had admired since his time in the WPA. The pair also became associated with the Taller de Gráfica Popular, an artists' print collective where White honed his skills in lithography. As White's health improved in the warm climate, his marriage to Catlett deteriorated, and the couple divorced in 1947.
Back in New York, White continued to create a socially conscious body of work. "Art, " he believed, must be an integral part of the struggle.His political affiliations during the McCarthy era attracted the attention of-and a subpoena from-the FBI. It was around this time that the dense, dynamic Social Realist style that had characterized White's earlier output gave way to works on paper executed in charcoal or muted oils, works the artists described as images of dignity.
In 1956, White sought relief for his ongoing battle with tuberculosis by moving to Southern California. There, he became an integral and influential member of a circle of creative artists, writers, and activists. Unsurprisingly, his art reflected the issues of the day and those closest to his heart, becoming more politically pointed and focused on themes of the civil rights movement. From 1965 until his death in 1979, White taught at the Otis Art Institute, fostering a new generation of socially conscious artists. White was the recipient of numerous awards and honors during his lifetime, including his 1972 election as a full member (and only the third African American member) of the National Academy of Design.His work is held in several renowned art museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. In 2018, the Art Institute of Chicago mounted the first major survey of the artist's expansive career, Charles White: A Retrospective.
The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina. The Legacy of Charles White in L. The legacy of Charles White spans multiple decades and three cities: Chicago, his birthplace; New York, where he grew in prominence as an artist and joined social causes; and Los Angeles, where his art and activism coalesced during the civil rights movement. LACMA celebrates White's legacy in a pair of exhibitions currently on view. Provides a long-overdue examination of White's career and impact on the cities where he lived and worked.
Life Model: Charles White and His Students. Explores his role as an empowering teacher and mentor through the work of the students who revered him. The latter is presented at LACMA's satellite gallery at Charles White Elementary School, which occupies the former Otis Art Institute campus in MacArthur Park, where White was a faculty member. White and his wife Francis moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1956. At the time White was already an established artist in New York, but Los Angeles is where he became a leading figure in the African-American arts community, as well as a significant cultural voice who helped transform the city into a notable place for art making. Is also where White produced some of his most well-known and strident political artworks that speak to his evolution as a cultural activist. Since the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, the Whites had supported the nonviolent resistance of Martin Luther King Jr.Which aligned with the artist's humanistic ideals and the dignity he bestowed on the African Americans who populate his drawings, paintings, and prints. This positive, optimistic perspective resulted in works like the drawing. (1964), a response to the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls. In a talk given at LACMA in 1969, White said of the drawing: Instead of trying to re-create an event, I put a reaction on paper...
I drew a picture of a crouched male figure holding a plumb line over the rubble. The symbol and the statement were intended to suggest that perhaps destiny has chosen blacks to be the catalyst for change in our society.The crouched figure was symbolic of the architect who would help to do the planning in creating a new society. White quickly made inroads in the L. Art scene, which in the late 1950s was still smaller and distinct from those in other major cities.
His art remained figurative and resolutely focused on people, while the East Coast avant-garde gravitated toward Abstract Expressionism and, later, Pop Art and Minimalism. As the civil rights movement progressed, White's art began to reflect his growing impatience with the pace of social change-namely in.(1966), a group of 12 charcoal and ink-wash drawings, and the Wanted Poster Series, begun in 1969. Is a reference to the 1898 letter by Émile Zola to the French president exposing the political injustice of the Dreyfus Affair (when Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was falsely accused and imprisoned for spying). All 12 of the drawings were on view at the Heritage Gallery for a 1966 show when, just before the opening, White changed the titles of every piece to.
His repeated use of this title "echoed the federal government's recurring inability to recognize black humanity, " according to Ilene S. Fort, curator emeritus of American Art, who organized the LACMA presentation of the retrospective. The Wanted Poster Series, drew both its subject matter and visual treatment from a collection of 19th-century newspaper advertisements for auctions of enslaved people and wanted posters for those who escaped.As White explained in his 1969 talk at LACMA, We are all fugitives. The faces and figures in the series are set against or framed by backgrounds of fractured planes that produce the effect of crumpled or creased paper-an effect that White transferred to many of his later works.
The figures are accompanied by faint texts, numbers, and images like pointing hands that recall the historical source material. By appropriating that vocabulary and deploying it in a contemporary context, White asserted that the country's history of slavery still reverberates through the lived experience of African Americans in the present day. In 1965, White began teaching at Otis Art Institute as the first African-American member of the school's faculty.Teaching and encouraging young artists was as integral a part of White's career as his own practice. As he wrote in 1943, I feel that in advancing my ideas in the art field, I will have to spend much of my time teaching and encouraging young Negro art students. We have the opportunity to make a great contribution to American culture, but it will have to be a group effort rather than an individual contribution. At Charles White Elementary features work by many of White's students, including David Hammons, Judithe Hernández, Kerry James Marshall, and Kent Twitchell, alongside sketchbooks, photos, and archival footage that illuminate White's pedagogy.
In White, these students found a role model carving out a place in a racist art establishment, as well as strong encouragement for making socially engaged art. In addition to teaching technical skill, he urged them to become "thinking artists" guided by their own individual perspectives. "He had a profound influence on a generation of artists who have gone on to produce some of the most incisive social commentary in contemporary art, and I think the amazing variety of art in this exhibition says a lot about his respect and care for each of their unique voices, " says C. Ian White, the artist's son, who co-curated the. It's incredibly meaningful to present this show in the very place where he taught. White's work was exhibited at LACMA for the first time in 1971, when the museum organized. At the urging of the Black Arts Council, formed in the late 1960s by LACMA staff and local artists.Alongside works by Timothy Washington and his former student David Hammons, the show featured examples from White's. And the Wanted Poster Series, as well as the large ink drawing.
Which LACMA acquired for the permanent collection. By then White was a nationally recognized figure in the black arts movement, known not just for his art but also as an activist and important public speaker. While some criticized the grouping of work by such a senior figure with that of two lesser-known local artists, White had no objection, showing his deep commitment to nurturing other African-American artists and increasing the visibility of black art. White would later serve on the advisory board of L.
S California Museum of Afro-American History and Culture (now the California African American Museum), and was involved in the planning of LACMA's landmark 1976 traveling exhibition. Two Centuries of Black American Art. In addition to eight of his works in the show, White created a lithograph for the museum. Which was selected by the organizers as the exhibition poster. More than 40 years after it was commissioned.The image of a mother cloaked in a flowing sheet, ceaselessly cradling her child, encompasses the essential themes that make White's oeuvre timeless and relevant: the weight of American history, the endurance of the oppressed, and, in her face upturned toward the light, hope for the future. Is on view through June 9 in LACMA's Resnick Pavilion. Is on view through September 15 at Charles White Elementary School in MacArthur Park. This article was first published in LACMA's Spring 2019.