The story of abstraction in America has long featured an overwhelmingly white cast of characters, but in recent decades, that has finally started to change.
African-American artists have created various forms of abstract art in a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, collage, drawing, graphics, ceramics, installation, mixed media, craft, and decorative arts, presenting the viewer with abstract expression, imagery, and ideas instead of representational imagery.
It is past due that these artists, and countless others, figure into the narrative of abstract painting in the United States.
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Recent years have seen swelling recognition for important Black Abstract Expressionists like Norman Lewis, Alma Thomas, Beauford Delaney, and subsequent generations of artists including Edward Clark, Sam Gilliam, Howardena Pindell, Stanley Whitney, and Jack Whitten.
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Historical Context and Key Exhibitions
In 1991, the Kenkeleba Gallery in New York presented the landmark exhibition “The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975,” which featured 35 artists.
Fifteen years later, art historian Kellie Jones curated “Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980” at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
And in 2014, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery mounted “Beyond the Spectrum: Abstraction in African American Art, 1950-1975.”
These exhibitions, among others, served as important interrogations of art historical narratives surrounding Abstract Expressionism, which had long excluded Black artists.
Early Showcases
- As part of "The Negro in Art Week" (1927), the Art Institute of Chicago presented a Chicago Woman's Club organized exhibit featuring more than 100 artworks from the Blondiau-Theatre Arts Collection of Primitive African Art and examples of modern and contemporary art, including abstraction, portraiture, realism, and ritualism.
- In 1936, the Texas Centennial Exposition showcased the Hall of Negro Life, the first recognition of black culture at a world's fair, featuring murals by Aaron Douglas, a modern abstract painter.
- In 1939, the Baltimore Museum of Art presented Contemporary Negro Art, a major museum exhibition, featuring Samuel Joseph Brown’s “Temperance”, an abstraction, in the exhibition catalog.
Group Initiatives and Later Exhibitions
- In 1963 Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Charles Alston, and Hale Woodruff initiated the Spiral group to discuss their views on the Civil Rights movement.
- In 1968, William T. Williams along with Melvin Edwards, Guy Ciarcia, and Billy Rose, founded Smokehouse Associates, filling vacant lots with abstract murals.
- Frank Bowling organized the 5+1 exhibition at Stony Brook University and the Princeton University Art Museum in 1969.
- In the Spring of 1971, the Whitney Museum unveiled Contemporary Black Artists in America.
- The De Luxe Show opened at the DeLux Theater in Houston, Texas' Fifth Ward, credited with being one of the first racially integrated art exhibitions in the United States.
- In 1994, The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, including abstract works, was exhibited at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
- In 2010, the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba House in New York organized African American Abstract Masters that was presented at the Anita Shapolsky Art Foundation and the Opalka Gallery at the Sage Colleges.
- The Ogden Museum of Southern Art presented the traveling abstract art show Solidary and Solitary, featuring 70 works from the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection.
- In 2022, the National Gallery of Art presented, Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South, an exhibit of assemblage, drawings, paintings, quilts, and other items from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation that included abstract work.
Key Figures and Their Contributions
Dominated by leading figures including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, Abstract Expressionism marked an exciting new moment for artistic expression in America in the late 1940s and ’50s.
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Despite having been excluded from important narratives surrounding Abstract Expressionism for decades, recent art market demand suggests that both artists’ undeniable contributions are finally being recognized.
- Norman Lewis: Began his career in a figurative style rooted in Social Realism, but transitioned to a more abstract style of art in the mid-1940s.
- Alma Thomas: Typically associated with the Washington Color School, became the first Black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1972.
- Jack Whitten: Developed his own distinctive vocabulary and had his auction record posthumously smashed in 2019, when his painting Special Checking (1974) sold for $2.6 million.
Market Recognition and Auction Records
Several prominent Black abstract painters have seen monumental auction results and sales prices in recent years, suggesting an increase in demand for their work following growing recognition from museums and representation by leading galleries.
The record prices for both Lewis’s and Thomas’s works at auction were broken on consecutive nights in November 2019: Thomas on the 13th, when her radiant composition A Fantastic Sunset (1970) sold for $2.6 million at a Christie’s evening sale; Lewis on the 14th, when his 1962 painting Ritual nearly quadrupled its low estimate, selling for $2.7 million at a Sotheby’s evening sale.
But prices paid for both artists’ works in private sales are significantly higher, according to Michael Rosenfeld, founder of the eponymous New York gallery, which represents the estates of both artists.
Auction Highlights:
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| Artist | Artwork | Sale Price | Auction House | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alma Thomas | A Fantastic Sunset (1970) | $2.6 million | Christie’s | November 13, 2019 |
| Norman Lewis | Ritual (1962) | $2.7 million | Sotheby’s | November 14, 2019 |
| Jack Whitten | Special Checking (1974) | $2.6 million | Sotheby’s | 2019 |
Contemporary Artists and Continuing Legacy
A new cohort of Black painters working in abstraction-artists like Tomashi Jackson, Torkwase Dyson, and Adam Pendleton, to name a few-continues to draw inspiration from and build on the forms and techniques from previous generations.
Rosenfeld similarly noted the deep reverence that artist Julie Mehretu has for Lewis’s work, adding that he’s observed “a very conscious continuum” over the past several decades between contemporary Black abstract artists and previous generations.
This continuum is incredibly important and crucial to reckoning with erasure throughout art history.
Black artists’ contributions to the development of contemporary figuration have been acknowledged by an increasingly broad public over the past decade.
