107
●
NELSON STEVENS (1938 - )
Stevie Most Out
.
Acrylic on illustration board, circa 1979-80. 762x610 mm; 30x24 inches.Titled in pencil, verso.
Provenance: the artist; Madge Sinclair, Los Angeles; estate of Madge Sinclair; private collection,
Calabasas, CA; David Lusenhop, Detroit, MI (2010.)
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nelson Stevens created a series of paintings based on the image
of StevieWonder.Around 1981, an exhibition of these works was mounted at a Los Angeles gallery
owned by Jamaican actress Madge Sinclair (
Roots
,
Trapper John, MD
, and other TV shows and films).
The present work was included in this exhibition.
Nelson Stevens was born in Brooklyn, NewYork. In 1962, he received his BFA (painting) from Ohio
University in Athens, OH. He received his MFA in 1969 from Kent State University in Kent, OH.
After brief teaching stints in Cleveland, Ohio, Stevens was hired as Assistant Professor of Art at
Northern Illinois University where he taught from 1969 to 1971. It was at this time that Stevens was
invited to join the newly formed art collective AfriCOBRA.He has exhibited in every AfriCOBRA
exhibition since
AfriCOBRA II
at the Studio Museum in 1971. Stevens’ work was included in
exhibitions at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Fisk University Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Art
Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, and others.Well known indoor and outdoor murals
by Stevens include installations at the United Community Construction Workers Labor Temple in
Roxbury, MA (1973) and at Tuskegee University’s administration building (1979-80).
His teaching career continued in 1972 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he was
first an associate professor and then Professor of Art in the Departments of Art and African American
Studies. He remained there until his retirement. Nelson Stevens has a lengthy museum exhibition
history and is also admired as an important muralist.
Another work from the
StevieWonder
series by Stevens is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
Yet another work from this series was exhibited in the AfriCOBRA exhibition mounted at the
DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago in 2013.Works by Nelson Stevens are
in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum and other public institutions.
[3,000/5,000]
