Barbara Jones-Hogu USA, 1938-2017

Barbara Jones-Hogu was an accomplished printmaker whose work was foundational to the development of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Jones-Hogu co-founder of the influential black arts collective AFRICOBRA, and was a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), which completed the famous Wall of Respect in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago in 1967.

Jones-Hogu worked in a variety of printing techniques, including woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and screen prints. Her work dealt directly with social and political issues relevant to her community in her time. For example, her print Stop Genocide was based on what she saw as the “self-genocide” of Black gang violence. In the 2011 documentary AFRICOBRA: Art for the People, she recalled that the goal of AFRICOBRA was to make art for the Black community, made by Black artists, saying, “The people we were making art for looked like us.”

The prints Jones-Hogu made during her time with AFRICOBRA—which include Unite, Nation Time, Rise and Take Control, Relate to Your Heritage, High Priestess, Stop Genocide, and many others—have become recognized as some of the most iconic images from the group’s oeuvre.

Jones-Hogu’s work has been exhibited extensively at major institutions all over the world, and is included in many significant public and private collections.