Kerry James Marshall, Untitled: Rythm Mastr daily set, Pen and ink, collage, acrylic, and latex on board in four parts, 2020-23
Bio:
American, b. 1955
Title:
Untitled: Rythm Mastr daily set
Date:
2020-23
Medium:
Pen and ink, collage, acrylic, and latex on board in four parts
Dimensions:
Each: 27 11/16 × 38 3/4 in. (70.3 × 98.4 cm)
Credit Line:
Gift of The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation
Accession Number:
2023-108a-d

Not On View

As a student of the eminent social realist artists Charles White and Arnold Mesches, Kerry James Marshall cultivated technical acumen and a deep fluency in art history. In the past four decades he has used both to exploit and expand the critical tradition of western art, from grand narrative paintings to surrealism to abstraction.

In the late 1990s, Marshall introduced Rythm Mastr, a comics project. The Dailies are set in “Black Metropolis,” the former nickname of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where the artist has lived and worked for thirty years. The series, which began as three overlapping strips— Rythm Mastr, P-Van, and, On The Stroll—has since expanded to include three additional threads—Classic Comedy Comics, The Platform, and Evi L’Angelina. Populated by a host of real and imaginary South Side characters, including precocious children, gangsters, and superheroes inspired by African art and cosmology, these works explore history, culture, and politics through an ever-evolving Black vernacular lens.

Information may change as a result of ongoing research.

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