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Image of Shadow Over The Land

Shadow Over The Land
Painting

1966
59 1/2 x 50 1/2 in. (151.13 x 128.27 cm)

Benny Andrews (Madison, Georgia, 1930 - 2006, Brooklyn, New York) Primary

Object Type: Painting
Medium and Support: Oil and collage on canvas
Credit Line: Gift of the Benny Andrews Estate
Accession Number: 2010.18

SJMA Label Text


So, Who Do You Think You Are? (2011-2012)

As the son of sharecroppers from rural Georgia, African-American artist Benny Andrews created lyrical, empathetic portrayals of people who faced injustices of poverty, war, and racism. Encouraged by his parents at a young age to pursue his creative endeavors, Andrews enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a young adult. He rejected the school’s emphasis on abstraction in favor of figuration and social realism, and incorporated into his work painful childhood memories of growing up black in the segregated South. In this painting, a hunched, downtrodden African-American boy is set within a dreamlike seascape filled with frolicking nudes. The tiny, waif-like figures enjoy an earthly paradise reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1504). Yet, in his painting Andrews reconsidered the western tradition of landscape painting by introducing modern issues of identity and race. The out-of-place main figure may reflect Andrews’s own feelings of alienation as an African-American artist in a predominantly white art world.

Exhibition

Evergreen: Art from the Collection, July 23, 2022 – ongoing, Historic Wing Davies Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

Our whole, unruly selves
, November 19, 2021 - June 25, 2022, North, South and Central Skylight Galleries, San José Museum of Art.

So, Who Do You Think You Are?, September 25, 2011 - January 15, 2012, New Wing, Second Floor, Central Skylight Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

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