CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979) Love is a Naked Shadow.
Charcoal and crayon on illustration board, circa 1966. 1310x775 mm; 51 1/2x30 1/2 inches. With the artist's estate signature stamp, lower right.
Provenance: the artist's estate; Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, with the gallery label on the frame back; collection of Evelyn N. Boulware, New York.
Illustrated: Benjamin Horowitz, Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White, 1967, frontispiece. The artist is depicted posing in front of this drawing on his studio easel.
The title is a line taken from the 1927 Langston Hughes poem Song for a Dark Girl: Way Down South in Dixie (Break the heart of me) Love is a naked shadow On a gnarled and naked tree.
This evocative title and the reflective pose of this graceful figure reflect the pain and poignancy of the times. 1965-66 was a pivotal time for Charles White--that year, he began teaching at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and was commissioned by Golden State Mutual Life to draw General Moses (Harriet Tubman). Meanwhile, race riots broke out in many cities, including Los Angeles, and the National Guard occupied the Watts section of the city. Widespread acts of violence upon African-American communities such as the lynching made notorious in Hughes's poem and Billie Holiday's song Strange Fruit continued in the struggles of the mid-1960s. White was also reaching new career heights during this California artistic period--with important solo exhibitions at ACA Gallery, New York and Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, as well as winning awards at international exhibitions in France and Germany.
