?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
SUZANNE JACKSON (1944 - ) The Flower and a Bird.
Graphite and pencil on wove paper, circa 1970. 508x381 mm; 20x15 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; Miriam Matthews, Los Angeles; thence by descent to the current owner.
This is only the second unique work to come to auction by this artist, dancer, poet and gallery owner who was at the center of the art scene in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Born in Saint Louis and raised in the Yukon, Jackson studied both art and 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 with Charles White, she became part of a young artistic circle in Los Angeles that included Dan Concholar, Alonzo Davis, and Timothy Washington. In addition to working as an elementary art instructor, she taught art and dance at the Watts Towers. In 1968, Jackson opened her own artists space, Gallery 32, on Lafayette Park, near the Otis and Chouinard Art Insitutes, and exhibited many artists including Emory Douglas, David Hammons, Yvonne Cole Meo, Betye Saar, Senga Nengundi and Timothy Washington. Her 1970 Sapphire Show was the first Los Angeles survey of African-American women artists but Jackson had to close the gallery that same year. Jackson herself had solo exhibitions at the Ankrum Gallery in Los Angeles in 1974 and 1976. Jones p. 260; Tilton/Charwood pp. 40-41.
