Five Euro American Artists
Artwork has the power to communicate directly with its audience, and original and free of European style influences will convey more effectively the information intended by artists.
Durand and others’ works promote an idealized American landscape while at the same time reflecting a colonial perspective of nature, both celebratory and exploitative. Modern Indigenous artists such as Dyani White Hawk and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith contest these problematic painted narratives.
Beauford Delaney
At a time when black artists were underappreciated, Beauford Delaney rose above his peers and became an influential figure. Utilizing flat spaces with thick applications of paint, his lyrical painting style echoes jazz music’s improvisational nature.
After moving to Boston in 1924, he studied at both the South School of Art and Copley Society evening classes, receiving an intensive crash course in black activist politics and ideas from some of the most advanced African Americans such as James Weldon Johnson – writer, diplomat and rights activist; William Monroe Trotter (founder of National Equal Rights League); and Butler Wilson – Board member of NAACP.
At 52, Delaney relocated to Paris where he discovered an appreciation for pure abstraction. Inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies and Turner’s vibrant hues, his paintings transcended any representational elements.
Bob Thompson
Born in Kentucky, Thompson achieved international renown during the late 1950s for his paintings of figurative complexity and intense color intensity. Following graduation from University of Louisville he spent time in Provincetown working alongside artists like Red Grooms and Jan Muller before moving to New York and becoming a regular of downtown painters’ scene exhibiting group exhibitions as well as solo gallery shows.
Dody Muller advised Thompson to study Renaissance and Baroque works by masters such as Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca; later reinterpreting these compositions with vibrant hues that could function more fully narrative, spatial, psychological, political and retinal than colors typically do.
Thompson left an incredible legacy, one that still echoes today.
Sarah Sze
Sarah Sze, born in Boston 1969, uses everyday materials to craft intricate sculptures and installations that explore how information is continually being created, modified, modeled, dismantled and transformed – from physical laws to the fractal patterns in our daily lives.
At the 2013 Venice Biennale, she represented the US with Triple Point. The artist has an acute sense of spatial intuition which allows her to craft works that resound and engage specific spaces. Ripple (Times Zero), for instance, features swirling shapes of projected imagery that connect and overlap to create an intricate constellation.
Untitled and Stone Series from 2013-2015 showcase this dynamic. Layers of paint, etchings, silkscreened images, art historical references and architectural drawings combine with more abstract elements to produce intricate constellations that seem to extend beyond their frames.
Harmonia Rosales
Rosales, an Afro-Cuban artist from Colombia, draws her artistic approach from her ancestors and illustrates femininity’s power of acceptance across cultural divides. Her striking female figures on canvas symbolize empowerment, self-love and healing.
At the outbreak of World War Two, fourteen major painters left Europe for America – among them Duchamp, Chagall, Leger, Masson, Tanguy and Picasso as well as Breton of Surrealist fame – assisted by The American Emergency Rescue Committee or Paris Committee to escape potential death.
Rosales expertly merges representations of Black Lucumi religion, Greco-Roman mythology and Christianity with canonical Renaissance paintings. Her paintings reimagine Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to include Oshun as Goddess of fertility, sensuality and prosperity who has vitiligo. By creating these new versions of Sandro Botticelli works, Rosales challenges viewers to consider notions of identity, enslavement and transcendence through an African diasporic lens.
Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley is known for his paintings depicting people of color posing in poses from classic European art. Drawing upon his traditional training as an artist (replicating images), instead of featuring white figures he portrays black figures instead.
He is an artist and activist; both an advocate of inclusion and critic of art-world practices.
Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, his mother encouraged him to enroll in art classes early. After attending Los Angeles County High School for the Arts he attended San Francisco Art Institute before earning both a BFA and MFA at Yale. Wiley currently maintains studios in New York, Beijing and Senegal with teams of painters creating intricate backgrounds before Wiley adds figures himself.