Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall is among the most essential American artists working today, distinguished by a practice that rigorously confronts the history of painting and the systematic omission of the Black figure from the Western art historical canon. Through meticulous craft, Marshall insists on visibility, dignity, and complexity, asserting Black subjectivity as a central concern of contemporary art.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Marshall relocated in his childhood to South Central Los Angeles, an environment that profoundly shaped his foundational understanding of American social dynamics and urban life. He later anchored his professional career in Chicago, Illinois, where he served as a respected educator, teaching painting at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Art and Design. His influence extends far beyond the canvas; in 2017, his profound impact was recognized when he was named to the annual Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people, a rare distinction for an artist primarily engaged in demanding institutional accountability through figurative painting.

This body of work, spanning 1989 to 1992, focuses intensely on preparatory studies. The ten drawings and single associated painting housed in the National Gallery of Art collection demonstrate Marshall’s profound commitment to planning and composition, centered primarily around the work titled Great America. Such rigorous preparatory drawing is characteristic of a master determined to place his Kerry James Marshall paintings within the grand tradition of history painting, rather than confining them to niche categories.

Marshall’s innovation lies not just in what he paints, but how. He deploys a precise, often vibrant, palette and a style that oscillates deftly between academic formality and pop cultural vernacular. The resulting works are ambitious, conceptually dense, and visually arresting, establishing new parameters for figuration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. While many of his iconic large-scale works remain institutional keystones, the widespread interest in his practice means that high-quality prints of his celebrated drawings and canvases are routinely sought by collectors and enthusiasts globally, ensuring that his crucial historical intervention remains accessible to the public.