Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 9

Reginald K. Gee
'It's Floating' original oil pastel and acrylic on paper bag, signed lower right

1999

About the Item

Oil pastel and acrylic on paper bag, signed lower right Art: 13 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches Frame: 19 5/8 x 17 5/8 inches Reginald K. Gee was born in Milwaukee on April 28, 1964 to Native American and African American parents and spent most of his childhood on the northwest side of Milwaukee in the Havenwoods neighborhood. Gee has been creating art since 1982, and his professional art debut began in 1986 at an outdoor exhibition at Milwaukee’s Performing Arts Center. Like Prophet William J. Blackmon and Simon Sparrow, Gee is primarily self-taught. He refers to himself as a visionary Neo-Expressionist. Like the Neo-Expressionists, his work is characterized by its raw depiction of subjects, the use of textural and expressive brushwork and intense colors. According to Sotheby’s auction house, Neo-Expressionist art, “[a]s a reflection of the postmodern world,” is characterized by a “sense of tension, alienation and ambiguity” and is “often accompanied by playfulness and parody.” Gee counts among his artistic influences Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and David Salle. He is a brilliant colorist who has produced a body of work numbering in the hundreds, including a series of pastels on brown paper bags executed from 1999-2007, some of which were among the works shown at a 25-year retrospective at the David Barnett Gallery in 2013. The artist has been featured at the Outsider Art Fair in New York, the National Black Fine Arts Show, and the Chicago Black Art Expo. In 2002, two of Gee’s paintings, The Inspiration and Honest Crowd, were selected for inclusion in a Smithsonian traveling exhibition honoring the legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Another Gee painting, Nationwide Tobacco Ban, c 1998, was chosen for a campaign against smoking sponsored by the American Lung Association. According to the Milwaukee Journal in 1999, the artist had a spiritual epiphany that compelled him to move to San Francisco, start a ministry among the homeless, and continue to pursue the art career he began in Milwaukee.
  • Creator:
    Reginald K. Gee (1964, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1999
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 19.62 in (49.84 cm)Width: 17.62 in (44.76 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: 11347c1stDibs: LU605311270272
More From This SellerView All
  • "Figure with Kite, " Oil Pastel on Grocery Bag signed by Reginald K. Gee
    By Reginald K. Gee
    Located in Milwaukee, WI
    "Figure with Kite" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece in the lower right. It depicts a silhouette of a man in a hat fl...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Oil Pastel, Found Objects

  • "Environmental Extremist Marries Maple Tree!; ..." Oil Pastel by Reginald K. Gee
    By Reginald K. Gee
    Located in Milwaukee, WI
    "Environmental Extremist Marries Maple Tree!; Swears He's Perfectly Sane; Hints Toward Offspring Possibilities" is an original oil pastel drawing on board by Reginald K. Gee. The art...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Oil Pastel

  • "City Dwellers Portrait, " Oil Pastel on Grocery Bag signed by Reginald K. Gee
    By Reginald K. Gee
    Located in Milwaukee, WI
    "City Dwellers Portrait" is an original oil pastel drawing by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece on the back. This artwork depicts an abstracted portrait in green, peach, b...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Oil Pastel, Found Objects

  • "T.V. Viewer, " Oil Pastel on Grocery Bag signed by Reginald K. Gee
    By Reginald K. Gee
    Located in Milwaukee, WI
    "T.V. Viewer" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower left. It features an abstracted man watching television. 13 3...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Found Objects, Oil Pastel

  • "Leg & Shoe in Blue, " Oil Pastel on Grocery Bag signed by Reginald K. Gee
    By Reginald K. Gee
    Located in Milwaukee, WI
    "Leg & Shoe in Blue" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece on the back. It features a disconnected gray leg with a high-h...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Found Objects, Oil Pastel

  • "Make A Statement, " Oil Pastel on Grocery Bag signed by Reginald K. Gee
    By Reginald K. Gee
    Located in Milwaukee, WI
    "Make A Statement" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece on the back. This piece depicts an abstract figure and potted pl...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Oil Pastel, Found Objects

You May Also Like
  • "Angel of Light"
    Located in VÉNISSIEUX, FR
    Dear art lover, This spiritual artwork called "Angel of Light" has a special meaning for me. When there is period of crises or any hard challenges we should face in our life, we can...
    Category

    2010s Romantic Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Oil Pastel

  • "You are my rock"
    Located in VÉNISSIEUX, FR
    Dear art lover, I love working on one of my favorite series dedicated to women and especially I try to go deeper on exploring a theme of a soul bond or a soul connection between peop...
    Category

    2010s Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Oil Pastel

  • "On the beach"
    Located in VÉNISSIEUX, FR
    Dear art lover, This artwork makes part of my series dedicated to " Women" and in particularly celebrates a special bond and connection between women. This artwork highlights the f...
    Category

    2010s Impressionist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil Pastel

  • "Three angles: Love, Hope and Faith"
    Located in VÉNISSIEUX, FR
    Dear art lover, This spiritual artwork called " Three Angles : Love, Hope and Faith" has a special meaning for me. When there is period of crises or any hard challenges we should fa...
    Category

    2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil Pastel

  • Cuban Artist Pastel Drawing African American Emilio Cruz Bonnie & Clyde Painting
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Emilio Cruz (1938-2004) Bonnie and Clyde Pastel on paper Hand signed lower right Dimensions Framed H 15-7/8" W 18-1/2", Sight H 13-1/2" W 16-1/8" Emilio Antonio Cruz (1938 – 2004) was a Cuban American artist who lived most of his life in New York City. His work is held in several major museums in the United States. Emilio Antonio Cruz was an American Artist of Cuban descent. He was born in the Bronx on March 15, 1938. He studied at the Art Students League of New York with Edwin Dickinson, George Grosz and Frank J. Reilly and at The New School in New York City, and finally at the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts. As a young artist in the 1960s, Cruz was connected with other artists who were applying abstract expressionism concepts to figurative art such as Lester Johnson, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Bob Thompson and Jan Muller. He combined human and animal figures with imagery from archaeology and natural history to create disturbing, dreamlike paintings. Cruz received a John Hay Whitney Fellowship and awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the late 1968, Emilio and wife Patricia Cruz moved to St. Louis to work with Julius Hemphill and the Black Artists Group. He served as director for the visual arts program, which also included painters Oliver Jackson and Manuel Hughes. In addition to artistic contributions, the couple participated in city-wide civil rights protests and rent strikes. Cruz moved to Chicago and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1970s, where he exhibited widely and was represented by the Walter Kelly Gallery. He wrote two plays, Homeostasis: Once More the Scorpion and The Absence Held Fast to Its Presence. These were first performed at the Open Eye Theater in New York in 1981, and later were included in the World Theater Festival in Nancy and Paris, France, and in Italy. In 1982 he returned to New York where he began to exhibit again. In the late 1980s he resumed teaching at the Pratt Institute and at New York University. Harry Rand, Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, described Emilio Cruz as one of the important pioneers of American Modernism of the 1960s for his fusion of Abstract Expressionist art with figuration. Geno Rodriguez, Curator and Executive Director of The Alternative Museum, wrote in 1985, "Emilio Cruz, is a brilliant and impassioned artist whose current paintings are monumental, imbued with intelligence, fury and an apt sense of irony. They reflect the turbulent world within which we live." Geoffrey Jacques wrote in 1990, "Emilio Cruz paints humanity’s essence. Mythology and archeology are the foremost concerns of the painter Emilio Cruz. Dinosaurs, skeletal humans and fossil-like images are used in his work as metaphoric signposts in a consideration of the basic questions of existence." Art historian and curator Paul Staiti wrote in 1997, "Emilio Cruz's Homo sapiens series is a strange and haunting genealogy of the modern soul... What is at stake here more than biopolitical culture, is the remystification of the body and mapping of consciousness ... For all the trauma, explicit and implicit, Cruz's style is masterful, classical, even beautiful." Exhibitions Cruz held his first solo exhibition at the Zabriskie Gallery in New York in 1963. Afterwards his work was included in many group and solo exhibitions, including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in 1986 and 1991, museum exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1987, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1997. In 1994, Cruz's work was shown as part of the American contingent at the IV Bienal Internacional de Pintura en Cuenca, Ecuador. Other American artists exhibiting at this show were Donald Locke...
    Category

    20th Century Neo-Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Oil Pastel

  • The Mean Hippies (Drawing with Rattlesnake Warrior and Red Rebels) Outsider Art
    By Alex O'Neal
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Paper measures 21 X 33 inches Born and raised in Mississippi, Alex O'Neal graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the Eighties, his formal education overlapped regular visits with Mississippi self-taught artists, including Mary T. Smith, Luster Willis, and Son Ford Thomas. He later immersed himself in art brut collections and European art brut in Switzerland, Germany, and France. His work is also inspired by African-American self-taught outsider art. O'Neal's drawings and paintings have been shown at The Drawing Center, New York; BRIC, Brooklyn; P.S.122, New York; Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY; Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta; Tennessee Arts Commission, Nashville; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; Centre d’Art des Pénitents Noirs, Aubagne, France; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Chicago Cultural Center; Ecomuseu, Valls d'Aneu, Spain; Amory Arts Center, West Palm Beach; Huntsville Museum of Art, AL; Rockefeller Art Center, SUNY Fredonia; ART LA; Field Projects, New York; LOG at Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC; and Linda Warren Projects, Chicago. His work is in volumes 16, 38, and 104 of New American Paintings. His paintings and drawings idiosyncratically depict circumstances that associate Americans, i.e. dysfunction, nature worship, cults, homegrown terrorism, Hollywood, reverence for Native America. There is formal influence from stylization found in Romanesque fresco, early American portrait painting...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Outsider Art Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil Pastel, Archival Paper

Recently Viewed

View All