CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979)

Triumph

Lithograph on wove paper, 1956. 580x445 mm, 23x17 inches, wide margins. Edition of 10. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "10/prints" in pencil, lower margin.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York; thence by descent, private collection, New York.

Illustrated: (another impression) Benjamin Horowitz, Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White, p. 63.

This lithograph is a superb impression of Charles White's powerful and extremely scarce print. Triumph displays White's mid-career mastery of drawing and its translation on to the litho stone. The image and the title Triumph possibly defines the moment of this couple finally obtaining freedom. The direct, frontal pose and the shawl-head covering of the woman is very similar to White's drawing of Harriet Tubman in his General Moses and Sojourner, 1954. Here the silvery gray lithographic crayon imitates his drawings in Wolff crayon, while beautiful patterns of scratched lines create highlights and textures.

We have not found an image of another impression aside from the one illustrated in Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White. The print was one of four prints, with 8 drawings, included in the artist's important 1958 spring solo exhibition at the ACA Gallery Charles White which traveled to Harris Hall at USC in Los Angeles. Correspondence from ACA Gallery director Herman Baron to White in the Charles White papers of the American Archives of Art states the first impression was sold to his friend and patron Harry Belafonte before the exhibition and other impressions were requested. Another impression was also included in the group exhibition 31 American Contemporary Artists at ACA Gallery in September of 1959. Gedeon Ea12; Oehler/Adler pp. 221-222.