Jack Whitten
(American, 1939–2018)
Biography
Jack Whitten was an African-American artist best known for his rigorous experimentation with the materiality of painting. Using eggshells, acrylic paint, copper, and Styrofoam, he creates unique textures and photographic light effects. Titling his works with scientific, personal, or popular culture references—such as Quantum Wall or Church Street Spring—the artist calls forth evocative metaphors for culture and visual experience. “I’m convinced today that a lot of my attitudes toward painting and making, and experimentation came from George Washington Carver,” Whitten reflected. “He made his own pigments, his own paints, from his inventions with peanuts. The obsession with invention and discovery impressed me.” Born on December 5, 1939 in Bessemer, AL, the artist grew up amidst the segregation of the South and became a participant in the Civil Rights Movement while studying at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Leaving the South for good, the artist moved to New York where he studied at the Cooper Union School of Art during the early 1960s. In New York, Whitten became deeply influenced by the Jazz music of John Coltrane as well as the paintings of Jacob Lawrence. Largely working without much public attention over the following decades, in 2014 the travelling retrospective “Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting” opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego to critical acclaim. The artist died on January 20, 2018 in Queens, NY. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others.
Jack Whitten Artworks
.jpg "SIXTH GESTALT (THE SEAMSTRESS), 1992")
.jpg "FIFTH GESTALT (THE COAL MINER), 1992")
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