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Artworks
Gerald Williams USA, b. 1941
Angela Davis, 1971Acrylic on panel50 x 50 x 2 1/2 in
127 x 127 x 6.3 cm6502Further images
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Angela Yvonne Davis was an influential member of the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 70s. She remains today one of the most influential...Angela Yvonne Davis was an influential member of the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 70s. She remains today one of the most influential Black American civil rights activists and authors. Many AFRICOBRA members memorialized Davis in their artworks. This painting by Gerald Williams gives life to Davis' words, manifesting her ideas on justice, equal rights, and unity as part of the make-up of her very being. Throughout the image, we see the traditional gender symbol for female, an homage to Davis as a strong, confident, Black, female role model.
Wadsworth Jarrell executed a painting of Davis around the same time, however, due to Jarrell and Williams being in separate cities at the time (the Jarrells had left Chicago for Boston in 1970), they were unaware of the other working on similar images, each man equally compelled to render Davis' fierce spirit in AFRICOBRA style. While Jarrell's image became iconic in part due to its translation into an affordable screenprint for AFRICOBRA II, Williams' painting nevertheless endures as an electrifying symbol of the era.
After Williams left the United States to live in Africa in the mid 1970s, the Davis painting remained unseen and unshown for more than 40 years, until being unveiled for AFRICOBRA 50 at Kavi Gupta in 2018.Provenance
The artist's studio, Chicago, IL, USA
Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA
Exhibitions
AFRICOBRA: Nation Time, 2019, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
AFRICOBRA 50, 2018, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA
AFRICOBRA III, 1973, Howard University, Washington D.C., USA
AFRICOBRA III, 1973, University Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
Literature
AFRICOBRA 50, 2018, published by Kavi Gupta Editions
AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art Toward a School of Thought, 2020, written by Wadsworth Jarrell, published by Duke University Press
AFRICOBRA: Nation Time, 2020, published by Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (Forthcoming)1of 2 -
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