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
$2,500
H 38 in W 48 in D 1.5 in
«Sh*t Happens» Figurative Oil Painting by Samantha Van Heest
By Samantha Van Heest
Located in Oslo, NO
Shit happens sometimes. In this piece, the artist wanted to create an unsettling and claustrophobic space where people feel most private and vulnerable. Inspired by artist Tala Madani, she created a cartoon figure to act as the voyeur, a bright and unwelcome disturbance that cannot be ignored. Samantha Van Heest...
Canvas, Oil
$7,903
H 25.6 in W 37.41 in D 1.38 in
Singularity- 21st Century Contemporary Figurative Portrait Painting of a man
By Tania Rivilis
Located in Nuenen, Noord Brabant
Tania Rivilis Singularity 65 x 95 cm Oilpaint on canvas Tania Rivilis (born in Ukraine 1986) 2022 winner of the 'William Locke Price' from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters ...
Oil, Canvas
$3,313
H 19.69 in W 19.69 in D 1.58 in
Tectonic Light - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative, Spray Paint, Oil
By Scott Naismith
Located in Barcelona, Catalonia
"My recent work now becomes more involved with cloud cover and its effect on light and colour through both its translucent and opaque properties. Clouds are visible masses of water d...
Canvas, Mixed Media, Oil, Spray Paint
$5,678
H 39.38 in W 47.25 in D 1.19 in
Untitled 1 - Contemporary Abstract Blue Painting, Conceptual Art
By Urszula Wilk
Located in Hallein, AT
Urszula Wilk – artist statment: I have always been interested in the idea of infiniteness of a painting and its opposite – that is the physical finiteness of the painting. This phy...
Cotton Canvas, Oil
$8,000
H 70.87 in W 74.81 in
«Ave Maria» Large Figurative Oil Painting on Canvas by Giorgi Qochiashvili
By Giorgi Qochiashvili
Located in Oslo, NO
Giorgi Qochiashvili's colourful world is impressive to say the least. Inspired by poetry, Japanese culture and films of Jim Jarmush, he creates massive paintings...
Canvas, Oil
$7,616
H 43.31 in W 55.12 in D 1.97 in
Meteors- 21st Century painting of a nude woman laying.
By Daniela Astone
Located in Nuenen, Noord Brabant
Daniela Astone Meteors 110 x 140 cm Oil on canvas Daniela Astone works and lives in Florence. For years she was a teacher on the famous Florence Art Academy. Since 2022 she fulltim...
Canvas, Oil
$6,000
H 47.25 in W 59.06 in
«Ta meg i mot» Figurative Oil Painting, toppless woman with blue boxing gloves
Located in Oslo, NO
«Ta meg i mot» oil on canvas by Anastína Eyjólfsdóttir. A toppless woman equipped with blue boxing gloves poses by the shore. Behind her, the sky and small strip of sea create a bl...
Canvas, Oil
$3,500
H 48 in W 36 in D 1.5 in
«Ellipses» Figurative Oil Painting by Samantha Van Heest
By Samantha Van Heest
Located in Oslo, NO
Ellipses plays with the nature of awkward interaction and subtle facial expressions. Is it all internal, or can awkwardness feel like a palpable and personified presence? Samantha Van Heest...
Canvas, Oil
$9,444
H 39.38 in W 31.5 in D 1.38 in
Etcetera - 21st Century Contemporary Figure Painting of a Bare Chest Man
By Tania Rivilis
Located in Nuenen, Noord Brabant
Tania Rivilis Etcetera 100 x 80 cm Oilpaint on canvas Tania Rivilis (born in Ukraine 1986) 2022 winner of the 'William Locke Price' from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters UK...
Oil, Canvas
$500
H 16 in W 12 in D 1.5 in
«My brother gave them a name» Still Life Oil Painting by Samantha Van Heest
By Samantha Van Heest
Located in Oslo, NO
This painting was inspired by the artists very first toy, a small blue giraffe, given to her as a day-old baby. It is something that has been around her whole life, and even though it is inanimate, there is a feeling of personification through the years of wear. Her brother as a baby would call giraffes “fa,” which is always a sweet memory she associate with this toy. Samantha Van Heest...
Canvas, Oil
$2,500
H 40.16 in W 40.16 in D 1.78 in
«Young Peer» Contemporary Figurative Oil Painting on Canvas by Matteo Merla 2010
By Matteo Merla
Located in Oslo, NO
In our society where everything runs so fast, stopping to consume a painting forces us to stop and reflect on an idea or a problem and consequently helps us develop a capacity for se...
Canvas, Oil
$6,369
H 29.14 in W 19.3 in D 1.58 in
8-1-21, 21st Century, Contemporary, Portrait Painting, Oil on Canvas
By Montse Valdés
Located in Barcelona, Catalonia
“I paint the human figure and explore further till I reach the Beauty of Being, the Soul.. the part of Human Being where everything is in total Serenity, Goodness and Harmony, where ...
Canvas, Mixed Media, Oil