Sale 2472 - African-American Fine Art, April 5, 2018

85 c ZELL INGRAM (1910 - 1971) Untitled (Three Nudes) . Oil on canvas, 1970. 1500x1156 mm; 59x45 1 / 2 inches. Signed and dated “70” in oil, lower right Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York; thence by descent to a private collection, California. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Zell Ingram made his way to and fromNewYork City giving puppet shows in the back of his convertible. He always dreamed of moving to New York City with his mother, who had been a strong and inspirational figure in his life. Ingram studied at both the Cleveland School of Art and the Art Students League in New York. He also worked as a graphic designer for The Crisis in the early 1930s – one of his drawings was illustrated on a March 1933 cover. The great poet Langston Hughes, one of the literary magazine’s famous contributors, befriended Ingram. They traveled together throughout the Caribbean in 1931, where Ingram sketched and painted women from Haiti. At the age of 32, Ingram taught at Karamu House, the Cleveland theater and arts center. His artworks were also included in the important 1940 Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro (1851- 1940) at the Tanner Art Galleries in Chicago. Inspired by his mother’s dedication, Ingram painted Dixie Mother , which was included in the 1942 ACA Galleries exhibition Negro Art from Cleveland’s Karamu House in New York. In his striking Untitled (Three Women) , Ingram portrays the importance of the black woman in a manner commonly associated with depictions of women in Greek and Roman classical art. This is only the second painting by the artist to come to auction. Between 1970 and 1971, Zell Ingram’s similar Seated Nude , 1965 was included in Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Black Artists: Two Generations at the Newark Museum. An untitled 1962 abstraction was also included in the 1991 Kenkeleba Gallery exhibition The Search for Freedom: African-American Abstract Painting, 1945 -1975 . [12,000/18,000]