?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
BERRY HORTON (1917-1987)
Untitled Ink on paper. 279x215 mm; 11x8½ inches (sheet).
Provenance: ex-collection of Susan Cayton Woodson (1918–2013); ex-collection of Eugene Foney (1950-2020); private collection, New York.
Born in Chicago, Berry Horton began pursuing life as an artist after a tour with the U.S. Navy. He became closely involved with the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), a WPA-sponsored project launched in 1940 to serve the largely African-American neighborhood of Bronzeville on Chicago's south side. For Horton, the SSCAC provided a community of artists and mentors, as well as artistic inspiration from the glamour of its annual Artists and Models Ball. In order to support himself, Horton produced portraits, street scenes, murals and commercial illustration. He also worked as a model at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was exposed to a wide range of art.
As a participant in Chicago's African-American art scene, Horton was close to prominent figures such as artist/designer William McBride Jr. (1912-2000), with whom he collaborated on design projects. His commissions included a mural for the headquarters of the Airline Pilots Association at 5440 Cicero Avenue (now demolished) and a portrait of Fredrick Douglass at the DuSable Museum of African American History. In a sign of how much Horton was respected, Dr. Margaret Burroughs (1917-2010), who helped found both the SSCAC and the DuSable Museum, spoke at his 1987 memorial. Despite these connections, Horton never had a proper studio and exhibited little if any during his lifetime.
After Horton's death, a portfolio containing some 150 of his drawings, many of which reflect his involvement with Chicago's LGBTQ African-American community and his transgressive vision of human sexuality, was preserved by Susan Cayton Woodson (1918–2013), a prominent African-American art collector and dealer in Chicago. Later, the drawings were acquired from Woodson by Eugene Foney (1950-2020), an influential art dealer, curator and promotor of African-American art.
In 2016, am exhibition of Horton's drawings was held at Redbud Gallery in Houston. In 2022, a selection of his drawings was included in "Emergence: Intersection at the Center," an exhibition at the SSCAC on the history of Chicago's Black LGBTQ artists.
