The Benny Andrews exhibition featuring 20 original drawings, dating from 1959 to 2005, on generous loan from The Andrews Humphrey Family Foundation will be on display until November in the corridor gallery of the Woodruff Library, Floor 3. The following is an essay written by exhibit curator Pellom McDaniels III.
by Pellom McDaniels III, Consultant, Associate Curator of African American Collections, MARBL
In the 1960s, Benny Andrews garnered the attention of the New York art world as an up and coming avant-garde artist and social activist. His unique, illustrative style and uncompromisingly expressive imagery boldly captured the human condition as he understood it: sad, desperate, tragic, common. By incorporating fabric, paper, and rope into his collages, and using muted and vibrant colors in his surreal compositions, critics recognized Andrews' works as arresting and disturbing on the one hand; and deeply contemplative and inspiring on the other. His unique approach to art production centered on the thick memories associated with America's long history of oppression, especially that of slavery and segregation. Andrews, by all accounts, was an original.
