Using an innovative technique he called “rough collage,” Benny Andrews created vivid portraits of everyday people that mixed painting with pieces of clothing and other textural materials.
Andrews grew up in a family of sharecroppers in rural Georgia, his creativity nurtured by his father, who was a self-taught artist, and his mother, who believed in the importance of education. He was the first in his family to complete high school and attended Fort Valley State College on a 4-H Club scholarship. Andrews was limited by the lack of art courses available to him at Fort Valley, and in 1950 he enlisted in the Air Force and served in the Korean War. On the G.I. Bill, he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). While fellow students focused on Abstract Expressionism, Andrews developed his own expressive style; one of his earliest portraits was of the janitors at SAIC. After he graduated in 1958, he moved to New York. Andrews’s first solo show was in 1960 at Paul Kessler Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Visibility and social justice were at the forefront of Benny Andrews’s paintings, which meditated on scenes of daily life, drawing on memories of the artist’s childhood in the South. His subjects included his family members as well as other artists, such as Alice Neel, Norman Lewis and Howardena Pindell.
A longtime educator, including for three decades at New York’s Queens College, Andrews avidly promoted opportunities for Black artists, such as cofounding with Clifford R. Joseph the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition in 1969, which advocated for inclusion in museum exhibitions. One of his final works —completed between 2004 and 2006 — was the Migrant Series in which he retraced the forced relocation of Indigenous people on the Trail of Tears, the Dust Bowl migration and the displacement of Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Andrews’s work has continued to garner acclaim after his death in 2006, with posthumous exhibitions including “Benny Andrews: Portraits, a Real Person Before the Eyes” at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York in 2020.
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Rollo Mixed Media Artwork, Contemporary, Signed, 1971, Framed, 24x15"
By Benny Andrews
Located in New York, NY
Benny Andrews was an African-American artist, activist and educator. Born in Plainview, Georgia, Andrews earned a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1...
Foil
Upim Mixed Media Artwork, Watercolor and Gouache on Paper, 1971
By Benny Andrews
Located in New York, NY
Benny Andrews was an African-American artist, activist and educator. Born in Plainview, Georgia, Andrews earned a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1...
Foil
"Istanbul Rising" abstract, mixed media collage - framed
Located in New York, NY
12"x9" mixed media collage: acrylic, metallic watercolor and papers, ink, collage dressmaking patterns, framed in a black shadowbox frame. Linda Ganjian's artwork captivates with it...
Foil
$4,200
H 22 in W 30 in
"Samsum Starburst" Painting, collage, metallic paint, foil, patternmaking paper
Located in New York, NY
22’’ x 30" mixed media collage: ink, watercolor, origami paper, gold foil, pattern-making paper on paper, framing options available. Linda Ganjian's artwork captivates with its orna...
Foil
$1,200
H 12 in W 9 in
"Double Ring Totem" abstract collage, (blue, red, black, silver, grey)
Located in New York, NY
12"x9" mixed media collage: acrylic, metallic watercolor and papers, ink, collage dressmaking patterns, framing options available. Linda Ganjian's artwork captivates with its ornat...
Foil
Harbour Dwellings
Located in Norwich, GB
In his early years Colin Kent studied and worked as an architect. He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1971 and then became a full time paint...
India Ink, Acrylic, Watercolor, Gouache, Archival Paper
$4,700
H 26 in W 26 in D 1 in
Picturesque Botany (Still Life Painting of Flowers on Blue in Victorian Frame)
By Julia Whitney Barnes
Located in Hudson, NY
Realistic still life painting of colorful flowers on blue, made with cyanotype, watercolor, India ink, and gouache "Picturesque Botany (Octagon/Foxglove, Gingko, Dusty Miller, Forget...
India Ink, Watercolor, Gouache, Archival Paper
"Istanbul Rising" abstract, mixed media collage - framed
Located in New York, NY
12"x9" mixed media collage: acrylic, metallic watercolor and papers, ink, collage dressmaking patterns, framed in a black shadowbox frame. Linda Ganjian's artwork captivates with it...
Foil
$2,400
H 19 in W 22 in
"Pious Pistons" Painting w/ collage, metallic paint, foil, patternmaking paper
Located in New York, NY
This mixed media collage has a geometric stylistic look of Futurism and Art Deco, created with handpainted metallic colors. ink, watercolor, origami paper, patternmaking paper, foil....
Metal, Foil
$4,000
H 22 in W 30 in
"Queen of Darkness" abstract mixed media collage, (blue, red, brown, gold, grey)
Located in New York, NY
22’’ x 30" mixed media collage: ink, watercolor, origami paper, gold foil, pattern-making paper on paper, framing options available. Linda Ganjian's artwork captivates with its or...
Foil
Unavailable|$250
H 8 in W 6 in
"#159 – SLEEP", ink, pencil, gouache, vintage book page, hemingway, poetry
By Amy Williams
Located in Toronto, Ontario
"#159 – SLEEP" is from Amy Williams' series "A Farewell to Arms" – wherein the artist works directly onto page 159 of a found copy of Ernest Hemingway's WWII romance novel. The artis...
Paper, Found Objects, Ink, Gouache, Pencil
$4,200
H 22 in W 30 in
"Nine Urns" Painting, collage, metallic paint, gold foil, patternmaking paper
Located in New York, NY
22’’ x 30" mixed media collage: ink, watercolor, origami paper, gold foil, pattern-making paper on paper, framing options available. Linda Ganjian's artwork captivates with its orna...
Foil
Unavailable|$250
H 8 in W 6 in
"#51 – WE THINK", ink, pencil, gouache, vintage book page, hemingway, poetry
By Amy Williams
Located in Toronto, Ontario
"#51 – WE THINK" is from Amy Williams' series "A Farewell to Arms" – wherein the artist works directly onto page 51 of a found copy of Ernest Hemingway's ...
Paper, Found Objects, Ink, Gouache, Pencil
$3,750
H 23 in W 19 in D 3 in
Cut w/ Surgical Scalpel on 2 ply Museum Board: 'Red & White Stripe Circle-In'
By Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen
Located in New York, NY
“CUT WORK” is an evolving examination of emotion experienced through the inspired meeting of blade and paper. Beginning with the featureless plane of a blank paper canvas and a surge...
Plexiglass, Gouache, Archival Paper, Adhesive
"The Reaper" Abstract Assemblage Figurative Painting
By Benny Andrews
Located in Houston, TX
Painting of an African American woman with short hair standing next to an abstract tree by southern artist Benny Andrews in 1975. Signed and dated in lower right corner. Hung in a decorative frame with a simple white mat. Dimensions Without Frame: H 29 in. x W 21 in. Artist Biography: Born in 1930, one of ten children in a Georgia farming family, Benny Andrews grew up desperately poor. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago on the G.I. Bill. He differed from his fellow students, mostly Abstract Expressionists, by going off to jazz clubs to draw. In 1958, he moved to New York, where his artist friends included Red Grooms, Bob Thompson and the Soyer brothers. For two years (1982-84), he served as director of the Visual Art Program for the National Endowment for the Arts, after which he returned to full-time painting. Two kinds of influence coexist in Andrews's art. The first is an exuberant regionalism that takes into account the lives of the poor; Andrews sees a precedent in the work of Thomas Hart Benton. The second is the narrative impulse of much African-American painting...
Mixed Media, Watercolor