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
The Dissidents: Discourse on the Golden Mean
By Michael Tole
Located in New Orleans, LA
Michael Tole says of his work… This work draws a connection between the didactic moralizing tendencies of Neo Classicism (represented in the style of the painting) and Modernism (represented in the architectural setting). Though modern art eschews the naturalistic imagery used by Neo Classicists, both movements pursued a self-important, austere, self-consciously masculine aesthetic that they saw as synonymous with virtue. Set in the MoMA courtyard, a passel of men lounge about, regarding a golden statue which looks terribly out of place in this modernist vitrine. The uncomfortable architectural setting, prisonlike and cold, provides a foil for the odalisque-like young men sprawled on hard stone benches and paying homage to the central idol. In my current work, The Revisionist Histories, I am writing letters to art history, literature, and mythology in an attempt to reflect the social changes that have reshaped our society over the past century. As part of this agenda, I explore the evolution of gender norms, power dynamics, and representation within Western visual culture and what this implies for the negotiation between pleasure, justice, and our culturally specific discourse on beauty. The seed for The Revisionist Histories was sewn when I caught a glimpse of my preteen daughters watching music videos on their iPad as I chopped veggies for dinner. Out of the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of music videos featuring Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, and Doja Cat gyrating across the tiny screen. A better parent might have snatched the iPad away, but I was overcome with hallucinatory visions of this pop diva...
Oil, Canvas
$1,400
H 15.75 in W 15.75 in D 0.79 in
Georgian Contemporary Art by Ilia Menabde - Still Life with Some Bread
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas Ilia Menabde is a Georgian painter born in 2003 who lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia. His practice explores the relationship between memory, time, place, and contem...
Canvas, Oil
$1,000
H 17.72 in W 20.87 in D 1.58 in
Korean Contemporary Art by Kim Yoon Kyung - The Moon Is the Sun’s Dream
By Kim Yoon Kyung
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas, Kim Yoon Kyung is a Korean artist born in 1977 who lives and works in Daegu, South Korea. Yoon Kyung studied Art theory at Daegu Catholic University. She later earned...
Canvas, Oil
$3,500
H 28.63 in W 28.63 in D 1.58 in
Japanese Contemporary Art by Miyuki Takanashi - A Girl With a Knitted Cap
By Miyuki Takanashi
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas & signed on bottom right Miyuki Takanashi is a Japanese artist born in 1961 who lives & works in Sapporo in Japan. She is graduated from Hokkaido University of Educati...
Canvas, Oil
French Contemporary Art by KEJ - Un Monde Violent
By Kej
Located in Paris, IDF
KEJ is a French artist born in 1959 who lives & works in Paris, France. He is considered to belong to the movement of Figuration Libre & Outsider Art. His works are referenced in the...
Canvas, Oil, Acrylic
$830
H 19.69 in W 15.75 in D 1.19 in
Armenian Contemporary Art by Kamsar Ohanyan - Turned Off the Electricity
By Kamsar Ohanyan
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas, Kamsar Ohanyan is an Armenian artist born in 1991 who lives and works in Yerevan, Armenia. He studied in Yerevan at State Pedagogical University with Kh. Abovyan at t...
Canvas, Oil
French Contemporary Art by KEJ - Aenigma
By Kej
Located in Paris, IDF
KEJ is a French artist born in 1959 who lives & works in Paris, France. He is considered to belong to the movement of Figuration Libre & Outsider Art. His works are referenced in the...
Canvas, Oil, Acrylic
$3,000
H 19.69 in W 19.69 in D 1.19 in
Georgian Contemporary Art by Teona Yamanidze - Ortonesque
By Teona Yamanidze
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas
Canvas, Oil
$7,000
H 35.83 in W 45.67 in D 1.58 in
Korean Contemporary Art by Kim Yoon Kyung - The Moon Is the Sun’s Dream
By Kim Yoon Kyung
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas, Kim Yoon Kyung is a Korean artist born in 1977 who lives and works in Daegu, South Korea. Yoon Kyung studied Art theory at Daegu Catholic University. She later earned...
Canvas, Oil
$5,597
H 28.75 in W 36.23 in D 1.97 in
Break the rule #1 Hélène Duclos 21st Century painting landscape contemporary art
By Hélène Duclos
Located in Paris, FR
This painting is part of the current exhibition entitled "The fantastic story of the liquid mountain" at Claire Corcia Gallery in Paris. The liquid mountain is populated by living b...
Canvas, Oil
$6,739
H 35.04 in W 57.09 in D 1.97 in
Alien invasion Stéphane Fauchille Contemporary art painting colour humour
By Stéphane Fauchille
Located in Paris, FR
Oil paint on canvas Unique work Hand-signed by the artist Stéphane Fauchille, dream anthropologist “Would you, for a moment, like to become the Claude Lévi-Strauss of the aborigin...
Canvas, Oil
$12,000
H 34.26 in W 51.19 in D 1.58 in
Korean Contemporary Art by Kim Yoon Kyung - The Yellow Horse
By Kim Yoon Kyung
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on canvas, Kim Yoon Kyung is a Korean artist born in 1977 who lives and works in Daegu, South Korea. Yoon Kyung studied Art theory at Daegu Catholic University. She later earned...
Canvas, Oil
Tend
By Jered Sprecher
Located in New Orleans, LA
As an artist I make paintings that exist in the sliver of space between abstraction and representation. My work compresses time into the surface of painting, that old technology. Inc...
Canvas, Oil
In Color
By Jered Sprecher
Located in New Orleans, LA
As an artist I make paintings that exist in the sliver of space between abstraction and representation. My work compresses time into the surface of painting, that old technology. Inc...
Canvas, Oil
The Giant
By Jered Sprecher
Located in New Orleans, LA
As an artist I make paintings that exist in the sliver of space between abstraction and representation. My work compresses time into the surface of painting, that old technology. Inc...
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