Oil on canvas, circa 1970. 1170x1170 mm; 36x36 inches. Signed in oil, lower right. Signed and titled in ink on the upper stretcher bar, verso.
Provenance: the artist, New York; private collection, New York.
Sentinel Gate is a wonderful example of another African motif the artist developed after his Celestial Gate series. The Celestial Gate and Sentinel Gate paintings incorporate vertical abstract compositions with forms derived from Ashanti gold weights and the doors of dwellings of Dogon chiefs in Mali. The artist began incorporating African motifs in his paintings as early as 1946, continuing well into the 1970s. The palette of this Sentinel Gate dates it from the early 1970s. There is another, later Sentinel Gate from 1977 in the John and Vivian Hewitt Collection of African-American Art, now the Bank of America Collection.
