ELDZIER CORTOR (1916 - ) Untitled (Study for Southern Gate).
Ink wash and pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1942-43. 572x343 mm; 22 1/2x13 1/2 inches. "Collins Bank Note Safety" watermark. Signed in pencil, lower right (twice, once indistinctly and again later, below, in a darker pencil).
Provenance: private collection.
This dynamic drawing is a very scarce study for Eldzier Cortor's iconic work Southern Gate. Cortor was a high school classmate of fellow future artists Charles White and Charles Sebree at Englewood High School, Chicago. Cortor later studied drawing at the Chicago Art Institute, and taught drawing at the Southside Community Art Center during the WPA in the late 1930s. This drawing features the same basic pose of the elegant, tall African-American nude found in the painting, but this study shows a bravado and expressionistic experimentation with ink drawing in describing the figure. The face is captured with the simplest, broad gestures, adding to the exposed sexuality of the female figure. With these interpretations of African-American female beauty, influenced by his study of African sculpture as much as his formal training, the artist earned a national reputation and a Guggenheim fellowship.
