FROM THE ESTATE OF BILL RUSSELL SUZANNE JACKSON (1944 - ) There is Something Between Us.
Acrylic wash on cotton canvas, 1972. 1245x1067 mm; 49x42 inches. In the original artist frame.
Provenance: acquired from Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, Bill Russell (1972); the estate of Bill Russell, Los Angeles (2022).
Bill Russell is a national icon and is widely considered one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the game. Russell was a great champion in sports and a vocal leader in the Civil Rights era. Russell's Boston Celtics teams won 11 NBA championships between 1957 and 1969. He was also selected to 12 All-Star games and won five MVP awards. His number was retired in 1972 and he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975.
Exhibited: Recent Paintings and Drawings, Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, 1972, with the gallery label on the stretcher bars.
Illustrated: Suzanne Jackson. What I Love: Paintings, Poetry and a Drawing by Suzanne Jackson, 1972, p. 20. In the artist's book, the artist paired this painting with the following poem:
This powerful painting by Suzanne Jackson is a significant work from her Los Angeles period of the early 1970s. This artwork was one of her new lyrical paintings featured in Jackson's first solo exhibition at Ankrum Gallery where it was acquired by Bill Russell.
Born in Saint Louis and raised in the Yukon, Jackson studied both art and ballet at San Francisco State University. After receiving her BA in painting, she moved to Los Angeles in 1967. While both studying and modelling at the Otis Art Institute, she soon became part of a young artist circle in Los Angeles that included Dan Concholar, Alonzo Davis, David Hammons and Timothy Washington. An active and influential figure in the artist community, Jackson worked as a curator, educator and administrator. From 1968-1970, Jackson opened her own gallery space, Gallery 32, out of her studio in the Granada Buildings near McArthur Park and the Otis Art Institute, and exhibited many young artists including Emory Douglas, David Hammons, Yvonne Cole Meo, Betye Saar, Senga Nengundi and Timothy Washington. Her important 1970 Sapphire Show was the first Los Angeles survey of African American women artists. Jackson was represented by the Ankrum Gallery in Los Angeles - she had solo exhibitions there in 1972, 1974 and 1976.
Today Jackson works in Savannah, Georgia, where she has lived since 1996. She received an MFA in theatre design from Yale University in 1990, and is a recent recipient of numerous awards including the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. Recent solo and survey exhibitions include Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024); Somethings in the World, Galleria d'Arte Moderna of Milan (2023); Just Above Midtown: 1974 to the Present, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
In 2025, SFMOMA will open a retrospective of the artist that will travel to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Bio notes courtesy of the artist's website.
