Engraving on aluminum, mounted on a wood panel, 1970. 914x1219 mm; 36x48 inches. Engraved signature and date "April 14, 1970", lower right. Signed, and titled in felt tip pen and ink, verso
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, Los Angeles (circa 1973); private collection. With the Brockman Gallery, Los Angeles ink stamp on the verso.
Exhibited: A Complete Innovative Graphic Show in Aluminum by Timothy Washington, Gallery 32, Los Angeles, June 6 - June 26, 1970.
Illustrated: Connie Rogers Tilton and Lindsay Charwood. LA Object & David Hammons Body Prints, pp 361-362; Kellie Jones Now Dig This!: Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-80, p. 240. Photographs of the artwork and the artist holding the artwork were used on the Gallery 32 announcements. Timothy Washington also was photographed holding this artwork outside Suzanne Jackson's gallery in 1969.
Solid Majority is a significant artwork by Timothy Washington and an excellent example of his ground-breaking work in aluminum. At the age of twenty, Washington had pioneered his innovative technique in the later part of 1967 as a BFA student at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. The artist first spray painted the aluminum plates with black enamel paint, and then incised the imagery with an engraving tool. Silent Majority was the centerpiece of his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at Gallery 32. Washington went on to be included in the important 1971 LACMA exhibition Three Graphic Artists. Organized by curator Joseph E. Young, the exhibition of Timothy Washington, David Hammons and Charles White included eleven of his works. Washington continued to exhibit his assemblage work, drawings and sculpture at the Brockman Gallery, Gallery 32 and Wylan Gallery in Los Angeles through the 1970s.
Today the significance of this body of work is widely recognized. Washington's work was included in the influential 2011 Tilton Gallery exhibition L. A. Object & David Hammons Body Prints and the 2012 traveling museum exhibition Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980. The Los Angeles artist had his first solo museum exhibition Love Thy Neighbor at the California Craft & Folk Art Museum in 2014. More recently, Washington's artwork was featured in the 2017-2020 important traveling museum exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power organized by the Tate Modern.
