31
●
JOHN BIGGERS (1924 - 2001)
Untitled (Seated Old Man).
Pencil on illustration board, 1945. 579x451 mm; 22
3
/
4
x17
3
/
4
inches. Signed in pencil, lower right
recto. Dated “4—45” in pencil, lower left recto. Inscribed “John T. Biggers, Hampton Institute,
Hampton,VA” in ink and “Lowenfeld 1405” in pencil, upper right verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, Hampton University; thence by descent to the current
owner, private collection.
This remarkable early drawing by John Biggers was drawn while he was both enlisted and at Hampton
Institute.This drawing is closely related to the oil painting
Old Man
, 1945, in the collection of the
Hampton University Museum. Both works depict a stooped, bald and bearded man with huge, folded
and gnarled hands, portrayed against the background of a leaning, dilapidated wood structure.
Biggers decided to become an artist upon taking an evening art class withVictor Lowenfeld in 1941
at Hampton Institute. Lowenfeld was a Jewish emigré, an Austrian artist and psychologist who fled his
homeland to teach at Hampton. Biggers’s education was interrupted byWorldWar II and his resultant
naval service in 1943. He was transferred to Hampton’s U.S. Naval Training School, allowing him to
continue working as an artist in the department studios on evenings and weekends. Biggers depicted
the homeless and downtrodden he remembered from his youth in Gastonia, NC. Both Lowenfeld,
and CharlesWhite, who was an artist-in-residence at Hampton in 1943, encouraged Biggers’s expressive
Social Realism. Biggers was transferred to Norfolk,VA in 1945, where the segregation of the services
caused him to suffer from depression; he was discharged by the end of the year. There are several
important works dated from 1945, including the paintings
Preacher Man
,
Sharecropper
,
Old Man
and
Old Coffee Drinker
.The latter two were returned to Hampton University and restored after being rolled
in the artist’s mother’s garage for over 50 years. Powell/Reynolds p. 178.
[10,000/15,000]