Collage of various papers and mixed media, including gold leaf, 1994. 273x298 mm; 10 3/4x11 3/4 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right. Titled in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.
Exhibited: Allan Stringfellow, Essie Green Galleries, New York, with the labels on the frame back.
This joyous collage of jazz musicians is the first work by this overlooked Chicago artist to come to auction. Born in Champaign, IL, Stringfellow moved to Chicago in the early 1940s, where he joined the Southside Community Art Center alongside Charles White and Eldzier Cortor and later taught screenprinting to children under the WPA's National Youth Association. He also met many famous musicians at the Club Delisa, the Chicago night club his father ran. With this early exposure, Stringfellow, influenced by Romare Bearden's collages and Jacob Lawrence's paintings, started a long career focused on depicting scenes of African-American life in music, religion and family. In the early 1960s, Stringfellow opened Walls of Art, Chicago's first black-owned gallery, and helped found the Wells Street Art Fair. Stringfellow's 2004 retrospective, Jamming with the Man, traveled to the Kranner Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the DuSable Museum of African-American History, Chicago.
