Oil on linen canvas, circa 1970. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; private collection.
Illustrated: Thom Pegg, Cliff Joseph: Artist and Activist, p. 75.
Humpty-Dumpty is a significant, mid-career painting by artist, activist and art therapist Cliff Joseph. Here he explores the expressive vejigante masks of Puerto Rico as both a representation of identity and a symbol of resistance. The papier mâché masks of devilish or demonic characters were part of the Taíno culture and believed to ward off evil spirits. Joseph's evocative, surrealist painting evokes the political consciousness of the moment, at the height of the Black Arts Movement. In 1968, Joseph co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) as a direct response to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's controversial exhibition Harlem on My Mind which did not include any works by Black painters or sculptors. The Coalition's goal was to increase the representation of Black artists in New York galleries and museums. Pegg p. 74.
