Winfred Rembert

"A self-taught artist, Rembert grew up working in the cotton fields of Cuthbert, Georgia, in the 1950's. He was arrested after a 1960's civil rights march and survived a near-lynching before serving seven years in jail. It was in jail, creating wallets next to another inmate, that he first learned to hand-tool leather. Years later, at the suggestion of his wife, Rembert integrated storytelling and the tales of his youth into tableaux on sheets of tanned leather. He soon attracted the attention and support of Jock Reynolds, Director of the Yale University Art Gallery, who exhibited his work next to that of renowned African-American artist and educator Hale Woodruff. Rembert often begins his pictures with drawings to work out detailed patterns. When the stories are carved and tooled into the leather, his images take on texture and depth, and finally he paints the surfaces in vivid dyes. The surface of the piece becomes an important aspect of the composition. The final images offer a flamboyant narrative of life in the still-segregated South of the mid-twentieth century. Rembert draws heavily from his own experience, populating his paintings with pool sharks, reverends, midwives and chain gangs—all of which come to life with the richness and vitality of oral tradition. The scenes range from cotton fields to night life. Each is as finely detailed as it is emotionally powerful."

Year

2012

Language

English

Publisher

Hudson River Museum

Editions

1

Pages

117

ISBN

9780943651415

Data source: Wikidata