?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
ELLIOTT PINKNEY (1934 - ) King.
Color screenprint on cream wove paper, 1975. 482x342 mm; 19x13 1/2 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 11/150 in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: collection of Evangeline J. Montgomery; the estate of Carroll Ann Parrott Blue, TX.
Exhibited: I Remember: Images of the Civil Rights Movement 1963-1993, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, August 28 - October 10, 1993, then traveled to, the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, 1993 - 1994; In the Spirit of Martin, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, January 12, 2002 - March 30, 2004.
Elliot Pinkney's split-level print is composed of black, red, and green, featuring six Black male figures in bondage above a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. imposed in a spiral background. The color use symbolizes pan-Africanism and counteracts with the men in chains, while strengthening the image of Dr. King Jr.
A native of Brunswick, Georgia, Pinkney moved to Southern California after serving in the U.S. Air Force. After his term of service and time in Alaska and California, he returned to Southland, CA to obtain a BFA degree from Woodbury University. Inspired by reading comic books as a child, his creativity led him to produce graphically inclined prints and murals. As a muralist, printmaker, and poet, he became a fixture in the community of Compton. In the early 1970s, he was active in the Compton Communicative Arts Academy, where he met director and artist John Outterbridge. While known primarily as a muralist, Pinkney's printmaking has been shown widely in galleries and museums across the country, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the California Museum of African American Art, and the San Bernardino County Museum.
