KERRY JAMES MARSHALL – THE COMPLETE PRINTS

ne of the most important American contemporary artists, Kerry James Marshall is known for artworks that address the ‘crisis of under-representation’ of the black figure in the pictorial traditions of the Western world, from museums to comic books. His work has been widely celebrated in major museum retrospectives such as Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff (Antwerp, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Madrid) in 2014 and Mastry (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles) in 2017, and through numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997.Best known as a painter, Marshall has throughout his career also produced a vast graphic oeuvre that has been seldom seen and rarely documented. An assiduous worker, he spent his youth acquiring time-honored skills of art – drawing and painting, but also wood engraving and printing. By his midtwenties, he recalls, ‘I could paint in egg tempera.… I was good at printmaking. I could do woodcuts, etchings, aquatints. I knew all of those techniques.’M