40
●
VINCENT D. SMITH (1929 - 2004)
Do-Rag Brother
.
Oil and sand on thick linen canvas, 1968. 750x610 mm; 29
1
/
2
x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil,
upper right.
Provenance: G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Chicago; private collection, Chicago.
Exhibited:
Jazz &....
, Kreft Center Gallery, Concordia University, Ann Arbor, MI, January 23 -
March 9, 2003 ,with the label on the verso.
Do-Rag Brother
is a wonderfully expressive painting byVincent Smith, and only the second significant
painting by the artist to come to auction. Here with his intense, fiery colors and a gritty texture of
sand, Smith depicts an almost abstract, graffiti-covered and scarred wall.Vincent Smith wanted to
record an era when many took to the streets, and he painted many episodes of the Civil Rights
struggle in the 1960s with fiery scenes from NewYork City to the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. As
in his other 1968 paintings, including
The Fire NextTime
in the collection of the Detroit Art Institute
and
Waiting
, Smith paints politically and socially disenfranchised figures in silhouette or flattened
against the picture plane.They are powerful and unforgiving - the figures often confront the viewer,
and are pressed against their urban environment, the stark store fronts and dark street corners of the
Village and Brooklyn. Smith himself has stressed this relationship - “When I paint, I’m always aware
of composition because I’ve always felt that the tighter the composition, the more interesting the
work,” he told
American Visions
magazine in 1999.
[10,000/15,000]
