| BENNY
ANDREWS (1930-2006)
Born:
Madison, Georgia, 13 November 1930.
Education: Fort Valley
State College, Ft. Valley, Georgia, 1948-50; School of the
Chicago
Art Institute, 1954-58, B.F.A. 1958; University of Chicago,
1955-56. Military Service: United States Air Force: staff
sergeant.
Family: Married 1) Mary Ellen Smith in 1959 (divorced
1976),
two sons and one daughter; 2) Nene Humphrey in 1986.
Career:
Since 1969 art instructor, professor, Queens College, New
York.
Director, Visual Arts Program, National Endowment for the
Arts,
Washington, D.C., 1982-84. Since 1987 member, board of
directors,
The MacDowell Colony, Artists Talk on Art,
Provincetown
Work Center, Creativedrama Society, Atlanta Bureau of Cultural
Affairs Gallery. Awards: John Hay Whitney Fellowship, 1956-66;
New York Council on the Arts fellowships,
1971-81;
MacDowell Colony fellowships, 1972-73, 1975-78; National
Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1974-81; O'Hara Museum Prize,
Tokyo, 1976; Bellagio Study and Conference Center
Fellowship,
Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy; President's
Research
Award, Queen's College, 1990. Address: 130 West 26th
Street,
New York, New York 10001, U.S.A.
Benny
Andrews could be called a minimalist. His drawings, oils,
and
collages, created oven the past forty years, were all done in
a
similar
manner, and Andrews has been quoted as saying that he was
not
interested in how much he could do on canvas but how little.
At
the
beginning of his career, Andrews always wanted to express
black
experience through his art, but he found during his studies
at
the
Chicago Art Institute that it was a difficult thing to do. Boris
Mango
and Jack Levine were the people at the Institute who inspired
him to continue to make art in his own way.
Andrews began his
own style of painting in the 1960s, when the collage movement
started
to flourish. He was using geometrical forms in his art, and
abstract
expressionism became a personal movement for him. Even
though
he has very little going on in his pieces, the message is as
effective
as if the composition were on a much larger scale. His
drawing
Mourners (Study for Appalachee Red) from 1977 shows
only
the outline of man and a woman with their backs to the viewers.
Their stooped postures in front of a small casket make one feel
the
sadness and the agony of losing a loved one. The Preacher, also
from
1977, is a simple drawing that reminds viewers of early-
morning Sunday sermons. Andrews is a humanist and crusader,
whose
portraits depict his personal feelings about human life, suffering,
desperation, and about hardworking African Americans and
blacks
all oven the world.
During the 1960s and 1970s Andrews was also busy organizing
a
crusade on behalf of the black artist. The Black Emergency Cultural
Coalition became the mouthpiece for the black artist. His 1971
painting
No More Games, located in the New York Museum of
Modem
Art collection, is about the plight of black artists. It is
a
collage
of oil and cloth on canvas, a composition of a dejected male
sitting
on a box, waiting for something to happen. On the second
panel
is a body covered with an American flag-perhaps this per-
son
was lynched. Edmund B. Gaither characterized another
Andrews
painting entitled Trash as "false religion plus sexism
plus
militarism
plus false democracy equals deception equals trash on
waste."
Andrews wanted to express himself differently from other
artists in order to create his own unique individuality. His
works are
delicate,
subtle, and intimate. Whatever the medium, they are always
linear, narrative, and abstract. He draws from his past private
life
in Georgia and his social life in New York. The inclusion of
rugged
surfaces, found scraps of papers, cloth, and built-up sections
gives the paintings a "surreal reality" in relation
to the past
and
present of a person.
His collages are at times illusionary and representational.
Christian imagery is prevalent in his work, and many of his
collages and
paintings
have referred to the southern black life, where there was no
interference
with religion. A social realist, Andrews believes that art
elevates people, glorifies people's pasts, and builds self-pride.
Individual
Exhibitions:
1962
Forum Gallery, New York
1964 Forum Gallery, New York
1966 Forum Gallery, New York
1971
Studio Museum, New York
1972
ACA Galleries
1973
ACA Galleries
1975
ACA Galleries , Herbert
F. Johnson Museum
1976
Lemer-Heller Gallery, New York
1977
Ulrich Museum, Wichita, Kansas
1978
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
; Lerner-Heller
Gallery, New York ; High
Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
1982
Albany Museum of Art, Albany, Georgia
1983
Sid Deutch Gallery, New York
1985
Brooks Museum, Memphis, Tennessee
; Stanback
Museum, Orangeburg, South Carolina
1985 Armstrong Gallery, New York ; Gallery
291, Atlanta, Georgia
1987
Shifflett Gallery, Los Angeles
1988
Studio Museum, New York
1989
Studio Museum, New York ; Danville
Museum of Fine Arts and History, Virginia
1989 Sherry Washington Fine Arts, Detroit
1989
McIntosh Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
; Gross
MeCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia
1992
Butler Institute of Art, Youngstown, Ohio
; Mississippi
Museum of Art, Jackson ; Triton
Museum of Art, Santa Clara, California ;
Susan
Conway Carroll Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1993 New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
; Fine
Art Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama
; Arkansas
Art Center, Little Rock
1995
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio ; Harriet
Tubman Museum, Macon, Georgia ; Brandywine
Print Image Gallery, Philadelphia ; Bill
Hodges Gallery, New York
Selected
Group Exhibitions:
1984
National Academy, New York
1987
Georgia Museum, Athens ; Hecksher
Museum, New York
1990
Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia
1992
R.F. Brush Art Gallery, Canton, New York
1993
Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama
; New
Jersey State Museum, Trenton
1994
Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia
1995
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia
; Glass
Museum, New York
Collections:
Memphis
Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee; Brooklyn Museum of
Art,
New York; Chrysler Museum ofAtt, Norfolk, Virginia; Columbus
Art
Museum, Columbus, Ohio; Detroit Institute of Art; Fine Art
Museum,
Mobile, Alabama; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia;
Hirshhorn
Museum, Washington, D.C.; Little Rock Art Center, Little
Rock,
Arkansas; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Morris
Museum
of Art, Augusta, Georgia; Museum of Modem Art, New
York;
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton; Newark Museum of Art,
New
Jersey; Philadelphia Academy of Art; Studio Museum, New
York;
Ulneb Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas; Wichita Museum of
Art,
Wichita, Kansas; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.
Publications:
By
ANDREWS: Articles-"One Understanding Black Art" in
New
York Times, 27 June 1970; 'The B.E.C.C.," in Arts Magazine,
Summer
1970; "Prison Art after a Decade," in American Artists,
March
1977; "A Wonderful Potpourri of Styles," in Art Journal,
Summer
1980; "Soyers' Work at the Form," in Artworld, November
1985; "Benton's America at the Equitable," in Artworld,
November 1985; "Is There a Black Esthetic?" in Art
Papers, November/December 1985; "Decentralization: the
Greening of America," in
Art Papers, March/April 1986; "The Mule Is about Keeping
On,"American
Visions, April 1988.
To
Artist Showroom |
