Benny Andrews was an African-American artist and social activist whose figurative expressionist paintings, prints and collages reflect various events of social injustice – antiwar demonstrations, struggles for civil rights – he had seen during his childhood and youth in American S.
Background
Benny Andrews was born on November 13, 1930, in a small community Plainview, Georgia, United States. He was the youngest child of ten in the family of George and Viola Andrews, who worked as sharecroppers. So, till the age of thirteen, Benny had lived in the system which resembled a lot the slavery age of his ancestors.
Despite Benny Andrews began to work on the land at the early age, he called his childhood as the happy time. He revealed his interest in drawing as a young boy and was encouraged in his passion by his parents who stood for the freedom of expression, the power of education and creativity.
Education
Benny Andrews studied at the Plainview Elementary School and at the Burney Street High School in Madison. He attended the institution only in winter because he had to help his parents on the lands. Although, the first member of his family, he managed to graduate in 1948.
Andrews obtained a two-year scholarship which allowed him to pursue his training at the Forth Valley College in Scotland. The art program of the college was limited, and Benny was not a brilliant student. So, in two years he left the institution.
Later, Andrews enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he learned abstract expressionism and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Benny Andrews started his professional career in 1950 from the three-year military service at the United States Air Force.
The debut solo show of the artist’s artworks took place at the Forum Gallery of the New York City in 1962 and was followed by a couple of personal expositions in 1964 and 1966.
He got acquainted with such representatives of figurative expressionism like Red Grooms, Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson and Nam June Paik.
Six years later, Andrews became a teacher at the Queens College in New York City where he had taught till 1997. While at the college, he created the art education program for his impecunious students. Andrews also worked out the art curriculum for the prisoners that was somehow an educational revolution.
Benny Andrews was actively involved in the cultural and social life of the city. So, in 1969, he joined the founders of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) which main goal was to increase the number of the African-Americans in art. The members of the association protested the absence of the African-Americans at the ‘Harlem on my Mind’ exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of in New York City. In a couple of years, Andrews produced one of his most known artworks called No More Games.
Other organization Andrews joined as the art coordinator in 1976 became the Inner City Roundtable of Youths.
Among the exhibitions of this period was the presentation of the Bicentennial Series at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City in 1971 and four years later at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
In 1982, the artist continued his activist work as the director of visual arts in the National Endowment for the Arts. While at the organization, he provided many talented African-American artists with grants and fellowships.
During the last period of his life, Benny Andrews tried his hand as an illustrator. He created the drawings for the books on the lives of Langston Hughes, W. W. Law, Josephine Carroll Smith and Civil Rights leader Congressman John Lewis.
As a real art activist, Benny Andrews established in 2002 the foundation aimed to promote the young artists and to help them obtain acclaim.
In 2006, the artist participated at the art project organized in Gulf Coast to help the children suffered from the Hurricane Katrina.
Study for Portrait of Oppression (Homage to Black South Africans)
Cargo (Study for Symbols)
War Study #13
Demagogue
Circle Study #6
Church Going Icon
Heaven
War Clouds
Circle Study #11
Utopia Study #16
Liberty Study #6
Confinment One
Circle Study #46
Family Study
Norman Lewis
War Study #17
Savannah’s Credit Card Protest
31
Teaser (Black Athlete Study #2)
Mr. America
Black Athlete (Study #1)
No More Games (Study #2)
Composition #9 for Trash
Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree?
Circle Study #10
Coming Together
Study of Guitarists for Symbols
Sexism Study #22
Champion
Sky Sash So Blue
Washload
American and Mother (Study for Symbols)
Woman (Study from Symbols)
Leaving Home
Sexism Study #24
The Soil
War Study #1
Trio (Study for Symbols)
Cradle
Idea Museum
Thresh Hold
War Study #15
The Way to the Promised Land
Many Sins
Sexism Study #25
Utopia Study 5-C
Circle Study #32
Portrait of Black Madonna
Thurst of Life
The Cop
Study #35 for Sexism
Down the Road
Chessmen #2 (Study for Trash)
Symbols Study #37
Utopia Study #18
A Soul
Come Out Fighting
Sexism Study #4
Cross Bearers
Sexism Study #21 (Sexus)
Duchamp
Sexism Study #18
Utopias Study #7
Circle Study #18
Circle Study #33
Wounded Sargent
Strummer (Study for Symbols)
Poverty
Views
Quotations:
"I don’t really think that art really does that much in terms of any kind of social change. . . . I think it always remains a selfish outlet for the individual. And even though they’ve thought up kinda nice words for people who try to be creative, the truth is, that if you try to be creative, you really have to be a very selfish, ego-centered person who has this ego to believe that if you do an apple it will convey something that the millions of people who paint apples all the time do not."
"I started working with collage because I found oil paint so sophisticated, and I didn’t want to lose my sense of rawness."
Membership
National Academy of Design
,
United States
1997
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"For Benny there was no line where his activism ended, and his art began. To him, using his brush and his pen to capture the essence and spirit of his time was as much an act of protest as sitting-in or sitting-down was for me. I can see him now: thinking, speaking, articulating what needs to be done and in the next few moments trying to make real what he had been contemplating. He was honest to a fault, and I think it was his determination to speak the plain truth that shaped his demand for justice and social integrity. He never aligned with any political group, but would offer the full weight of his support to anyone he thought was standing for truth." John Lewis, congressman
Connections
Benny Andrews was married two times.
His first wife became Mary Ellen Jones Smith, on April 3, 1957. The couple produced three children – Christopher, Thomas Michael and Julia Rachael.
Benny and Mary Ellen divorced in 1976.
Ten years later, Andrews married the artist Nene Humphrey with whom he had lived for twenty years.