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Kerry James Marshall
Memento (Dr. Martin Luther King John F. Kennedy Malcolm X, Civil rights workers

1997

About the Item

Kerry James Marshall Memento, 1997 Featuring civil rights leaders: Dr. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Medger Evers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Malcolm X, Black Panthers 6-Color lithograph with gold powder on soft white Somerset paper with deckled edges Pencil signed, titled and numbered 6/33 on the front Frame included: elegantly floated and framed in a handmade museum frame with UV plexiglass This is an excellent impression of a scarce and consequential 1997 Kerry James Marshall graphic work printed by Master Printer Ross Zirkle (1955-2007) at Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico (the publisher). Other examples of this work are in major public institutions such as SFMOMA, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Library of Congress - which is why Memento is so elusive and rarely found on the market. The present example is elegantly floated and framed in a white wood hand made museum frame with UV Optium Acrylic glazing - the highest quality. Measurements: Framed: 33 inches vertical by 47 inches horizontal by 2 inches Artwork: 30 inches vertical by 44 inches horizontal Bibliography: Pamela Franks and Robert E. Steele, Embodied: Black Identities in American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2010), 62, ill. Text from the Yale University Art Gallery website: Kerry James Marshall’s Memento memorializes the persons associated with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The work depicts multiple headshots of civic leaders and other individuals who died during this era, such as Medger Evers and members of the Black Panther Party. Rather than drawing these images, Marshall uses the newspaper obituary photographs that the general public is accustomed to seeing. He exalts the fallen individuals by placing angel wings behind most of the images. A black woman carrying an urn of flowers stands before portraits of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. The woman turns toward the viewer, asking us, and the larger community, to “mourn” with her. And from the Birmingham Alabama Art Museum: Kerry James Marshall’s lithograph commemorates civil rights heroes Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy. They are portrayed on a banner that reads “We Mourn Our Loss,” modeled on similar tributes popular during the 1960s. Above the banner, lost civil rights and black power movement figures are represented as angels. We are invited to remember these important events in American history by a woman offering a vase of flowers to the memorial. Here Marshall commemorates the civil rights era, but he also reminds us that the fight for civil rights and human rights was not over when he made the work in 1996. Born in Birmingham, Marshall moved from Alabama to Los Angeles in 1965—from one center of racial strife to another. He created this print shortly after Los Angeles was seized by riots protesting racially motivated police brutality in 1992. Today the Black Lives Matter movement continues to protest police brutality and serves as a means of public mourning. About Kerry James Marshall: Engaged in an ongoing dialogue with six centuries of representational painting, Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) is known for his expansive body of work, which also includes drawings and sculptures. At the center of his oeuvre is the critical recognition of the conditions of invisibility long ascribed to Black figures in the Western pictorial tradition, and the creation of what he calls a "counter-archive" that brings them back into this narrative. Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his BFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1978, where he was later awarded an honorary doctorate in 1999. In 2014, Marshall joined David Zwirner. Kerry James Marshall: Look See, an exhibition of new paintings by the artist, marked his first gallery solo show at David Zwirner in London that same year. Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting, the artist’s second solo presentation with the gallery, was on view in London in 2018. Marshall has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States since the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 2018, Kerry James Marshall: Collected Works was presented at the Rennie Museum in Vancouver and Kerry James Marshall: Works on Paper at The Cleveland Museum of Art. His site-specific outdoor sculpture A Monumental Journey was also permanently installed in Hansen Triangle Park in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. From 2016 to 2017, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, the first major museum survey of the artist’s work, was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, followed by The Met Breuer, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2015, he created a large-scale mural specifically for the High Line, marking the artist’s first public commission in New York. In 2013, his work was the subject of a major survey entitled Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff. The exhibition was first on view at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen in Antwerp. In 2014, it traveled to the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen and was co-hosted by two venues in Spain, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Other prominent institutions which have presented solo shows include the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2013); Secession, Vienna (2012); Vancouver Art Gallery (2010); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2008). Previous traveling solo exhibitions include those organized by the Camden Arts Centre, London (2005), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003), and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1998). In the Fall of 2023, the artist will unveil his stained-glass window commission for the Washington National Cathedral, Washington DC. In 2023, the Royal Academy, London elected the artist as an Honorary Royal Academician. Marshall received the 2019 W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, which is considered Harvard University's highest honor in the field of African and African American studies. In 2016, the artist was the recipient of the Rosenberger Medal given by The University of Chicago for outstanding achievement in the creative and performing arts. In 2014, he received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, an award given annually by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. In 2013, he was one of seven new appointees named to President Barack Obama's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Other prestigious awards include a 1997 grant from the MacArthur Foundation and a 1991 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Marshall lives and works in Chicago. - Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery
  • Creator:
    Kerry James Marshall (1955, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1997
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 33 in (83.82 cm)Width: 47 in (119.38 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    A fine impression of this very scarce and important print. The work is elegantly floated and framed with UV Optium Acrylic glaze - the best.
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1745213781242
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