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Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
INGE HARDISON (1904 - 2016) Sojourner Truth.
Bonded bronze with a blue-green patina, 1968. Approximately 571x254x102 mm; 22 1/2x10x4 inches. Incised "Inge" and "1968" on the base, rear edge.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This expressive figure of Sojourner Truth is a significant work by sculptor Inge Hardison. Despite a lengthy career as a sculptor and living to the age of 102, Hardison's work is not widely known today beyond her popular series of small cast busts of historical figures Negro Giants in History in 1963 and Ingenious Americans in the late 1960s.
Born in Portsmouth, VA, Hardison's family moved to Brooklyn in the 1930s where she pursued many creative interests including acting and dance. Journalist Alice Bernstein in her article, "Inge Hardison at 100" in the International Review of African American Art wrote how after graduating from high school, Hardison landed a role in the 1936 Broadway production of Sweet River, George Abbott's adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which won her rave reviews. Hardison also appeared in The Country Wife with Ruth Gordon, and in the 1946 production of Anna Lucasta, co-starring with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. She later attended Vassar College, majoring in music and creative writing, and later took art classes at the Arts Students League in New York. She also taught with Victor Lowenfeld at Hampton University from 1955-46.
Hardison made a wide range of figurative sculptures including several large public works such as the life-size 1957 bronze Mother and Child at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and the 7-foot abstract figure Jubilee at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Hardison was the only woman founding member of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters (BAAL), an African American cultural organization created in 1969 for the preservation and promotion of Black culture.
The original sculpture of Sojourner Truthwas presented to Nelson Mandela by New York Governor Mario Cuomo in 1990. Other casts of this work are in the collection of the New York State Harlem Art Collection and the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument of the National Woman's Party, Washington, DC. Her artwork is also found today in the collections of the Princeton University Art Museum, the Detroit Historical Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. iraaa.museum.hampton.edu; St. James pp. 229-30.
