EMILIO CRUZ (1937 - 2004) Frankly Miss Franklin is Frank.
Color felt tip pens and ink, and pencil on cream wove paper, 1970. 610x483 mm; 24x19 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance; the Port Authority of New York art collection; acquired at Dawson's Auctions (1997), with the labels on the frame; private collection, New York; thence by descent to a private collection, New York.
New York City native Emilio Cruz began his artistic career in the 1960s alongside artists such as Bob Thompson who applied the principles of Abstract Expressionism to figurative imagery. Cruz, an African-American of Cuban descent, spent the majority of his life in New York City, excluding the 1970s when he taught at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; the Hirschhorn Museum and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC. Biography courtesy of the estate of Emilio Cruz.
