Great America

Great America (1994) by Kerry James Marshall is the Gallery’s first painting by this major midcareer artist. A devoted student of the human figure and the history of art, Marshall draws upon the experience of African Americans to create imposing, contemporary history paintings.

Marshall’s mature career can be dated to 1980, when, inspired by the opening lines of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, he developed his signature motif of a dark, near-silhouetted figure in A Portrait of the Artist as His Former Self. Refusing both negative and positive…