Robert Colescott
(1925–2009)Robert Colescott's compositions question conventional aesthetic portrayals of race and gender, and call attention to the history of violent imagery in Western art and popular media.
Biography
As a child growing up in Oakland, California, Robert Colescott cultivated his love of music and drawing and interacted with the city’s Black cultural community.
His parents had relocated there from New Orleans to escape the violence of the Jim Crow South and to provide better educational opportunities for their children. In 1942, upon finishing school, Colescott served in the United States Army during World War II. He then used funding from the GI Bill to study at San Francisco State University, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, and beginning to pursue art. He primarily worked in an abstract style, as was common at the time. In 1949, he traveled to Paris to study with Fernand Léger, who encouraged him to question the dominance of abstraction and inspired his lifelong dedication to figuration.
After completing his MFA at Berkeley and spending the ensuing decade living in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, in 1964, Colescott began a residency at the American Research Center in Egypt. In 1967, he moved back to Paris before returning to the United States in 1970. The events of those years—the French protests of 1968, the anti-war movement, and the rise of Black Nationalism—had a profound impact on the content Colescott employed in his practice. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he began to hone the style for which he is best known: a cartoonish approach to figuration with a bright color palette. His compositions question conventional aesthetic portrayals of race and gender, and call attention to the history of violent imagery in Western art and popular media. To do so, he reworked masterworks of the European canon, including works by Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze.
Colescott passed away from Parkinson’s disease in 2009. He received his BA and MA from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a dedicated educator throughout his life, serving on the faculties of institutions including Portland State University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Arizona. The Studio Museum has presented Colescott’s work in exhibitions including The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (1990); The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (1990); and Collected: Reflections on the Permanent Collection (2010).
Robert Colescott
(1925–2009)Robert Colescott's compositions question conventional aesthetic portrayals of race and gender, and call attention to the history of violent imagery in Western art and popular media.
Auver-sur-oise, 1982
Biography
As a child growing up in Oakland, California, Robert Colescott cultivated his love of music and drawing and interacted with the city’s Black cultural community.
His parents had relocated there from New Orleans to escape the violence of the Jim Crow South and to provide better educational opportunities for their children. In 1942, upon finishing school, Colescott served in the United States Army during World War II. He then used funding from the GI Bill to study at San Francisco State University, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, and beginning to pursue art. He primarily worked in an abstract style, as was common at the time. In 1949, he traveled to Paris to study with Fernand Léger, who encouraged him to question the dominance of abstraction and inspired his lifelong dedication to figuration.
After completing his MFA at Berkeley and spending the ensuing decade living in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, in 1964, Colescott began a residency at the American Research Center in Egypt. In 1967, he moved back to Paris before returning to the United States in 1970. The events of those years—the French protests of 1968, the anti-war movement, and the rise of Black Nationalism—had a profound impact on the content Colescott employed in his practice. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he began to hone the style for which he is best known: a cartoonish approach to figuration with a bright color palette. His compositions question conventional aesthetic portrayals of race and gender, and call attention to the history of violent imagery in Western art and popular media. To do so, he reworked masterworks of the European canon, including works by Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze.
Colescott passed away from Parkinson’s disease in 2009. He received his BA and MA from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a dedicated educator throughout his life, serving on the faculties of institutions including Portland State University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Arizona. The Studio Museum has presented Colescott’s work in exhibitions including The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (1990); The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (1990); and Collected: Reflections on the Permanent Collection (2010).