LARRY POTTER (1925 - 1966) Untitled (Abstract Composition).
Color crayons on wove paper, 1963. 190x240 mm; 7 3/8x9 3/8 inches. Signed, inscribed "Paris" and dated in pencil, upper left recto.
Provenance: Gift from the artist; private collection, New York. Inscribed in pencil verso by the owner, with the dedication, "in memory of years together at the Blackburn workshop at 17th Street, NYC".
Larry Potter was among the second wave of young black artists to move to Paris after World War II, joining Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and others. Potter was born in New York and grew up in Harlem. Potter may have been inspired to travel to Paris by his good friend Bob Blackburn for whom he managed the Printmaking Workshop while Blackburn was in Paris in 1953. Potter lived there continuously after 1958. He showed his abstract paintings in Paris in 1964, and with other African American artists in Copenhagen in 1964. He died of an asthma attack at the age of 40. Valerie Mercer, Explorations in the City of Light: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-1965, p. 84.
