Sale 2528 - African-American Fine Art, January 30, 2020

65 c TURTEL ONLI (ALVIN PHILLIPS) (1952 - ) Family Group . Oil on cotton canvas, 1970. 610x508 mm; 24x20 inches. Signed “Turtel” and dated “3-5-70” in oil, lower right. Provenance: the Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., Chicago. Turtel Onli is a Chicago artist, author, art therapist, educator, and publisher. Onli has authored, illustrated and published numerous comic books and graphic novels. He is associated with the “Black Age of Comics,” a movement dedicated to the promotion of Afrocentric comic books and graphic novels. Onli earned a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and later returned to earn a MS in art therapy. In 1970, Onli founded the Black Arts Guild in which included fellow Chicago artists Dalton Brown, Obie Creed, Kenneth Hunter, Espi Frazier and Jim Smoote. Now a retired as a public school art teacher, he worked in the Chicago Public Schools for more than two decades. Recently, Onli was included in the 2013 exhibition Africobra: Art and Impact at the DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago. Zorach p. 288. [500/750]