Rico Gatson Colorful Collages Preserve the Legacies of Black Icons

Creators May 09, 2017

"For the last ten years, the artist Rico Gatson has carefully cut out well known black and white images of celebrated black politicians, writers, musicians, boxers, and civil rights leaders, recontextualizing them from the cultural and political realities that define them. For example, Gatson places a found image of Shirley Chisholm, the politician and a 70s symbol of black feminism, in a field of geometric lines evoking minimalism. A selection of Gatson's dynamic works on paper of legends like John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Angela Davis, and James Baldwin are currently on view in Rico Gatson: Icons 2007-2017 at The Studio Museum in Harlem."

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