Benny Andrews Figurative Paintings
American, 1930-2006
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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Artist: Benny Andrews
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 ...
Category
1970s Contemporary Benny Andrews Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
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Benny Andrews figurative paintings for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Benny Andrews figurative paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Benny Andrews in canvas, fabric, oil paint and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1970s and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Benny Andrews figurative paintings, so small editions measuring 36 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Dick Crispo, Grace Graupe-Pillard, and Patricia A Pearce. Benny Andrews figurative paintings prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $250,000 and tops out at $250,000, while the average work can sell for $250,000.
Artists Similar to Benny Andrews
Questions About Benny Andrews Figurative Paintings
- Where was Benny Andrews from?1 Answer1stDibs ExpertMarch 22, 2022Benny Andrews was from Plainview, Georgia. He received his formal artistic training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, and then moved to New York, New York, in 1958. Andrews died on November 10, 2006 in Brooklyn, New York. On 1stDibs, shop a collection of Benny Andrews art.