Description:

Benny Andrews
(African American; 1930 - 2006)
War Bastard Composition
c. 1973.

Born in Madison, Georgia, the son of sharecroppers, Benny Andrews studied at Fort Valley State College (1948-50). After serving in the Korean War with the United States Air Force, he was able, with funds from the G.I. Bill, to enter the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (1954-58), studying with Jack Levine and Boris Margo. He was generally viewed as an outsider, unyielding to the trends of abstraction at the time he was developing at the Art Institute. His work focused on figurative social commentary depicting the struggles, atrocities, and everyday occurrences in the world, especially in the African American community. In his drawings, paintings, and collages, Andrews continued to pursue representational art, which has been his focus throughout his long career. "Benny Andrews is a remarkable draftsman whose work is characterized by great economy of means," Patricia P. Bladon wrote in Folk: The Art of Benny and George Andrews. "He infuses his drawings with the same integrity and passion which characterize his large-scale paintings."

Adversity did not deter him from honing his personal style, nor did increasing popularity quiet his social concerns. As his career flourished he continued to speak out on the inequalities facing African American artists and helped found the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. He spent 29 years teaching art at Queens College and served as the Director of the Visual Arts program, a division of the National Endowment for the Arts (1982-84). His work received both critical praise and commercial acceptance. Elected to the National Academy of Design in 1977, he was awarded premier fellowships and exhibited widely in this country and abroad.

Benny has served as a curator, critic, and writer. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1997 and has received numerous awards and accolades. He maintained studios in Brooklyn, New York, and Litchfield, Connecticut. During his career, he exhibited at Forum Gallery, NYC, 1962-6; New School For Social Research, NYC, 1968; Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1963; Illinois State Museum; Rhode Island School of Design, 1969; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 1970; San Francisco Museum of Art; Spelman College, Atlanta, 1971; Talladega College, Atlanta, 1971; ACA Gallery, NYC, 1972. His work is found in more than thirty major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Hirshhorn Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Morris Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Newark Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Detroit Institute of Arts, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the National Museum of African Art, as well as many private collections.

12" x 18"

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May 30, 2013 1:00 PM EDT
Indianapolis, IN, US

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