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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Woman with Flowers
By Benny Andrews
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Benny Andrews, American (1930 - 2006) Title: Woman with Flowers Year: 1976 Medium: Oil and Collage on Canvas, signed and dated l.r. (and ...
Oil, Canvas
$26,720Sale Price|20% Off
H 43 in W 35 in D 2 in
Moment By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$22,080Sale Price|20% Off
H 36.5 in W 34.5 in D 2 in
Time By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$19,360Sale Price|20% Off
H 30.25 in W 34.1 in D 2 in
Historical Center In Santa Croce By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$25,360Sale Price|20% Off
H 43 in W 35 in D 2 in
Evening By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$13,840Sale Price|20% Off
H 24.5 in W 30.25 in D 2 in
Today Close To 2000 By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$10,870
H 55.12 in W 78.75 in
Todo avanza hacia su final V by Calo Carratalá - Landscape painting, Tanzania
By Calo Carratalá
Located in Paris, FR
Todo avanza hacia su final V is a unique oil on canvas painting by contemporary artist Calo Carratalá, dimensions are 140 × 200 cm (55.1 × 78.7 in). The artwork is signed, sold unfr...
Canvas, Oil
$22,080Sale Price|20% Off
H 35.5 in W 31 in D 2 in
Inside With Characters By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$4,400Sale Price|20% Off
H 48 in W 24 in D 1.5 in
Falling Leaves - Abstract Figurative Art by Marc Zimmerman - Contemporary
By Marc Zimmerman
Located in Carmel, CA
Falling Leaves - Abstract Figurative Painting by Marc Zimmerman - Contemporary Art This masterwork is exhibited in the Zimmerman Gallery, Carmel CA. Marc Zimmerman creates playful...
Canvas, Oil
$23,920Sale Price|20% Off
H 39 in W 35.5 in D 2 in
Helmet By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$724
H 15.75 in W 11.82 in
Small-Scale Contemporary Photorealistic Figurative Oil Painting: Body Study
By Raminta S. R. Mint
Located in Vilnius, Vilniaus apskr.
Raminta S.R. Mint, a young and emerging artist, challenges traditional representations of the body, positioning it as a reflection of contemporary society’s fixation on physicality a...
Canvas, Paint, Cotton Canvas, Oil, Spray Paint
$25,360Sale Price|20% Off
H 43 in W 39 in D 2 in
Rose Vecchio Cafe By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
$10,640Sale Price|20% Off
H 23.1 in W 27 in D 2 in
Baptistery By Bruno Paoli - Figurative Painting
Located in Carmel, CA
Certificate of authenticity and artist catalogue are included. Bruno Paoli (1915-2005) Teaching the masters helped create this contemporary master. Bruno was a professor of art in F...
Canvas, Oil
Sold
H 15.5 in W 19.5 in
"New York Cafe" Benny Andrews, 1966 African-American Social Realist Work
By Benny Andrews
Located in New York, NY
Benny Andrews New York Cafe, 1966 Signed, titled and numbered in pencil, lower margin Lithograph on wove paper Image 10 1/2 x 14 1/4 inches Sheet 13 x 18 inches Edition 201/250 Ben...
Paper, Lithograph