?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
WILLIS "BING" DAVIS (1937 - ) Ancestral Spirit Dance #361.
Oil pastels on black wove paper, 2003. 1016x813 mm; 40x32 inches. Signed, dated and numbered #361 in white pencil, lower left.
Provenance: the artist; Wright-Dunbar, Inc.; the estate of Dr. Maya Angelou. This is one of two Willis "Bing" Davis works purchased by the Dayton city board and presented to Dr. Angelou and Oprah Winfrey as thanks for their appearing at a benefit program honoring Bessie Coleman at the Schuster Performing Art Center in 2005.
Willis "Bing" Davis has been working on his series Ancestral Spirit Dance since 1973. The series, which now includes almost 500 works, is a result of a study trip to West Africa during the early 1970s.
Davis was born in Greer, SC, but grew up in Dayton, OH, where he lives today. He attended DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, graduating in 1959. He attended the School of the Dayton Art Institute and received his M.Ed in 1967 from Miami University in Oxford, OH. Biography courtesy of the artist's website.
