Oil on masonite board, 1960. 184x392 mm; 7 1/2x15 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in oil, upper left.
Provenance: estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; Robert Henry Adams Gallery, Chicago, with the labels on the painting back; private collection, Michigan, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 6, 2007.
Illustrated: Wardlaw, Alivia J. Charles Alston, David C. Driskell Series of African-American Art, p. 41, pp. 86-87
This early abstraction reflects Charles Alston's growing interest in painting with black and white compositions into the 1960s. Charles Alston began working in a series of abstract paintings with this minimal palette in 1959. Alston's Black and White II c. 1960 is in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. A founding member of the Spiral Group in 1964, Alston "considered the black and white abstractions in a retrospective shown in 1968 to be amongst his most important he had done." Bearden/Henderson, Jr., p. 269.
