by Amy Crawford via smithsonianmag.com
Born in Chicago in 1918, the artist Charles White always received inspiration from the struggles and triumphs of black people—major historical figures like Frederick Douglass as well as ordinary people like his own mother, who worked as a maid her whole life.
It was White’s mother who bought him his first box of paints, when he was 7 years old. He would go on to earn a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, where a major retrospective of his work opens this month.
Among the pieces on display is the 1977 lithograph Love Letter III, which pairs a Madonna-like figure with a motif White often used to represent feminine life-giving and creativity: a conch shell.
A book on his work, Charles White: A Retrospective by Sarah Kelly Oehler and Esther Adler, will be available on June 19, 2018.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/new-exhibit-gives-charles-whites-art-activism-attention-they-deserve-180969007/#63kFiDTHT4RgRBZj.99
December 4, 2024