Important Oil Painting by DON MCILVAINE D. C. Born Chicago Black Artist LISTED
Offered is a very important Black Americana painting, done by the Washington D. Depicting a black man holding a rooster. Painting is oil on masonite. Signed bottom, right corner and dated 5/3/71.
It measures 30" tall x 20" wide. Comes in a frame, which measures 37.5" tall x 27.5" wide. Here is some information on him from the Chicago Film Archive.
Growing up in Washington D. McIlvaine attended Sunday morning art classes as a youth with Lois Mailou Jones. She later assisted him in getting a scholarship to study at Howard University. After studying at the Corcoran Art School and the Newark Academy of Art, McIlvaine moved to Chicago in 1957. McIlvaine (aka "Donnie Mac") was the second director of the North Lawndale-based art gallery, Art & Soul for a six-month period from 1969 to 1970. The gallery, which ran from 1968 to 1972, was a collaborative project between the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the notorious Chicago street gang, the Conservative Vice Lords or CVL, Inc. More on this collaboration via Rebecca Zorach: How did such a friendship come to exist? The Vice Lords, like other street gangs in the city, had become interested in working on neighborhood problems in a constructive way; they had gone conservative, and reinvented themselves as the Conservative Vice Lords, opening several businesses and sponsoring youth programs.Meanwhile, the MCA was brand new, and its director, Jan van der Marck, was interested in how museums could make more of an impact in their communitiestheir entire communities. And so, ever so tentatively, this friendship formed, and produced an experimental art center called Art & Soul, at 3742 West Sixteenth Street in the neighborhood of North Lawndale on Chicagos West Side. Art & Soul also provided the tools and space for young people of North Lawndale to express their thoughts in artistic form.
McIlvaine, who was not a Vice Lord, primarily worked with the children to paint powerful, aggressive and insistent murals throughout North Lawndale (Rebecca Zorach). While working with gang youth from 1969 to 1970, McIlvaine elevated mural art to national attention with six dynamic and politically conscious street paintings, including Black Man's Dilemma. In this particular mural, a figure of death is carrying the Bible while chained to an African American who is clinging to the American flag.
At the same time a black angel is pointing toward the African cultural symbol for dignity. McIlvaine said, when I first planned the Mural, I thought it might be too gruesome to paint outdoors for everyone to see like an outdoors advertisement.But later I realized that what I'd planned was reality. " Interviewed for a 1970 Time magazine article about diversity in visual art, McIlvaine declared, "People decorate the street because that's where their life is.
McIlvaine's murals have now, tragically, been almost entirely demolished. McIlvaine's efforts at Art & Soul worked not only toward artistic expression, but also identity building and consciousness raising, two elements of life that were not nurtured in Lawndale children's schools ("Youth Gangs"). A film by Dewitt Beall (found in Chicago Film Archives' DeWitt Beall Collection), Don McIlvaine is shown painting a mural of Frederick Douglas with children close by watching him. He asks one boy if he knows who Frederick Douglas was, after McIlvaine talks briefly about the murals of Diego Rivera on the University walls of Mexico City. The boy answers, He fought for freedom.
" McIlvaine says "Yes, that's true. But he also became a great statesman and was an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln, the only black man invited to speak with Lincoln. Did your teacher tell you that? " The child responds, "I had a white teacher. " McIlvaine: "She didn't tell you that?
McIlvaine also taught art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. McIlvaine passed away in 2005. He is survived by his wife, Herjuanita McIlvaine.Please ask for any questions. Don't miss out on this beautiful painting and see more antiques listed!
The item "Important Oil Painting by DON MCILVAINE D. Born Chicago Black Artist LISTED" is in sale since Thursday, October 13, 2016.This item is in the category "Art\Paintings". The seller is "d_i_p" and is located in Rockville, Maryland. This item can be shipped worldwide.: Signed