?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
JOHN BIGGERS (1924 - 2001) Family Ark.
Offset color lithograph triptych, 1992. Overall 758x1257 mm; 29 3/8x49 1/2 inches. Left panel, 758x352 mm; 29 3/8x 13 7/8 inches; center panel, 758x555 mm; 29 3/8x21 7/8 inches; right panel, 758x352 mm; 29x13 7/8 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 17/100 in pencil, lower right. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Provenance: the collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Illustrated: Allan L. Edmunds, ed. and Halima Taha. Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection pl. 150, p. 117.
Another impression of this triptych is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Painter, muralist, printmaker and educator John Biggers elevated the importance of understanding and addressing one's heritage in his narrative art. He conveyed this consciousness to generations of his students at Hampton University and Texas Southern University. In this composition, filled with symbols and objects from African and African American history, art, and religion, Biggers presents a family united in prayer in a triptych format resembling an altarpiece. The head wrap on the woman with outstretched arms at the center evokes the horned headdress of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of love and protection.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
