Sherman Beck USA, b. 1942

Part of Sherman Beck’s Mask series, also referred to as his Ancestor series, Ancestors (2005) . depicts ten highly abstracted mask-like forms set against a background of painterly yellow cubes. The series is inspired in part by the poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, which begins, “We wear the mask that grins and lies.” Throughout this series, Beck sets portraits of African masks and actual human faces afloat in colorful fields of abstract forms and patterns. The series ranges from the highly figurative, or, as in the case of this painting, to the totally abstract.