?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
JOHN BIGGERS (1924 - 2001) The Doorway.
Oil and acrylic on cotton canvas, 1989. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches (oval). Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "oil and acrylic" in pencil, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.
The Doorway is a lovely example of John Biggers's painting from his coveted "shotguns" period of the late 1980s. Rich with symbolic imagery, this intensely layered scene has the complexity usually reserved for his large murals within a small, easel-sized canvas.
The Doorway includes much of the artist's refined iconography from both African and African-American culture. The porch and doorway to the narrow shotgun house is one of his universal symbols of spiritual change in the New World. Here, a transformation in culture is faced by two generations-- with a mother, standing on a floating turtle, and her two young daughters, who are on the first step. Flanking the house in the shadows are female figures washing with a board on the right, and cooking at a pot on the left. Each woman is draped in a beautifully patterned African print fabric, all on a checkered patterned background. This dense painting incorporates all this under the romantic light of a starry night sky.
This composition was also used by John Biggers for his color etching and aquatint, The Return, 1997.
