Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1994, pencil signed and numbered 46/60 lower margin, with full margins, from Our Grandmothers, matted and framed.

Biggers created this series to illustrate Maya Angelou's poem, Our Grandmothers (1994).

Image size 22 x 16 3/4 in.; Frame dimensions 33 x 27 in.

Private Collection, Durham, North Carolina

Born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1924, John Biggers was one of the most significant African American artists of the twentieth century. He enrolled at Hampton University in Virginia - then Hampton Institute - where he planned to study plumbing, but after taking a class taught by the influential art educator Viktor Lowenfeld, his concentration shifted. Artistic highlights of his experience at Hampton Institute are inclusion of work in the 1943 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Young Negro Art, a compilation of selected works by Hampton students. Biggers also became friends with fellow students and artists Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White.

Biggers was drafted for the US Navy in 1943, which at the time was still segregated, so he was stationed at Hampton and created preparatory military models for training purposes. Upon leaving the army, he transferred to Pennsylvania State University where he completed his Ph.D. in Art Education. He went on to accept a faculty position at Texas State University for Negroes in Houston (now Texas Southern University), where he founded and chaired the Art Department until his retirement.

Very nice condition; a bright clean sheet; few minor margin scuffs; partially examined out of frame.

$800 - 1,200