Feb 17, 2011 - Sale 2237

Sale 2237 - Lot 72

Price Realized: $ 3,840
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
DON MCILVAINE (1930 - 2005)
Untitled (Flute Player).

Oil on masonite, circa 1969. 597x483 mm; 23 1/2x19 inches. Signed in oil, upper right.

Provenance: private collection.

Chicago's great mural artist, Don McIlvaine, is known for his figurative paintings of everyday struggles. Born in Washington, DC, he attended Sunday morning art classes as a child with Loïs Mailou Jones. She later assisted him in getting a scholarship to study at Howard University. After studying at the Corcoran Art School and the Newark Academy of Art, McIlvaine moved to Chicago in 1957. Working with gang youth in his Lawndale neighborhood, he elevated mural art to national attention in 1969-1970 with six dynamic and politically-conscious street paintings. Inteviewed for a 1970 Time magazine article about diversity in visual art, he declared, "People decorate the street because that's where their life is." His mural, Black Man's Dilemma, is illustrated in the 2000 publication, Walls of Heritage/Walls of Pride: African-American Murals.