NEW YORK (AP) — Faith Ringgold, an award-winning writer and artist who broke barriers for black women artists and became known for her colorful and detailed quilts that combined painting, textiles and storytelling, has died. Gone. She was 93 years old.
Ringgold died Friday night at his home in Englewood, New Jersey, the artist’s assistant, Grace Matthews, told The Associated Press. Ringgold was in poor health, Matthews said.
Ringgold’s highly personal works can be found in private and public collections around the country and beyond, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the High Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta. But his rise as a black artist in an art world dominated by white men and in a political culture where black men were the leading voices for civil rights was not easy. A founder of the black women’s collective We Eight Artists in 1971, Ringgold became a social activist, often protesting the lack of representation of black and female artists in American museums.
“I became a feminist because I hated the way women were marginalized in the art world,” she says. told the New York Times In 2019 “I began to incorporate this perspective into my work, particularly on black women as slaves and their sexual exploitation.”
In her first children’s picture book, “Tar Beach,” the feisty heroine flies over the George Washington Bridge. She explained that the story is a symbol of women’s self-discovery and freedom to confront “this big male image – the bridge”.
The story is based on her narrative quilt of the same name, which is now in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Although her works often deal with issues of race and gender, her folk style is vibrant, optimistic and light-hearted, often recalling warm memories of her life in Harlem.
Ringgold introduced quilting to her work in the 1970s after seeing Tibetan paintings called Thangkas. They inspired him to create patchwork fabric borders, or frames, with handwritten narratives around his canvas acrylic paintings. For her 1982 story quilt, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemina,” Ringgold undercut the stereotype of the black “Mummy” and told the story of a successful African-American businesswoman named Jemima Blakey. faced
“Aunt Jemima carries the same negative connotations as Uncle Tom, just because of her looks,” he told The New York Times in a 1990 interview.
Soon after, Ringgold produced a series of 12 quilt paintings titled “The French Collection,” again drawing on narrative, biographical, and African American cultural references and Western art.
One work in the series, “Dancing at the Louvre,” depicts Ringgold’s daughters dancing in a Parisian museum, seemingly oblivious to the “Mona Lisa” and other European masterpieces on the walls. Other works in the series depict giants of black culture in ring gold such as the poet Langston Hughes alongside Pablo Picasso and other European masters.
Among her socially conscious works is a three-panel “9/11 Peace Story Quilt” that Ringgold designed and constructed with New York City students to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Each panel has 12 squares with pictures and words that address the question “What would you do for peace?” It was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In 2014, his “Groovin’ High,” a photo of a crowded, energetic dance hall advertising Harlem’s famed Savoy Ballroom, was featured on a billboard along New York City’s High Line Park.
Ringgold also created a number of public works. “People Portraits,” consisting of 52 individual glass mosaics representing sports, performance and music figures, adorns the Los Angeles Civic Center subway station. “Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines” has two mosaic murals in the Harlem subway station featuring figures such as Deanna Washington, Sugar Ray Robinson and Malcolm X.
In one of her most recent books, “Harlem Renaissance Party,” Ringgold introduces young readers to Hughes and other black artists of the 1920s. Other children’s books include Rosa Parks, The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and The Underground Railroad.
Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold was the daughter of a seamstress and a dress designer with whom she often collaborated. He attended the City College of New York where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art. She was a professor of art at the University of California, San Diego from 1987 to 2002.
Ringgold’s motto, posted on its website, states: “If anyone can do it, anyone can, all you have to do is try.”
Credit : apnews.com