In 1970, Heritage Gallery published a set of prints from Charles White's WANTED poster series, recognized in its time and now considered White’s most famous group of work. The images in the series draw on advertisements for slave auctions and wanted posters for escaped slaves found in a cache of old newspapers from the antebellum South given to the artist by a friend. Faces and bodies are framed by stenciled letters, numbers, and pointing hands that appear collaged or stamped onto crumpled backgrounds. The abstract patterns surrounding the figures are among the vivid visual devices White used to evoke a lineage of oppression of African Americans. Far from having ended, the artist witnessed the continuation of this culture, enacted on people he knew. The folio contained six prints and was introduced on the inside cover with the following text by White, dated January 1970:
"The substance of man is such that he has to satisfy the needs of life with all his senses. His very being cries out for these senses to appropriate the true riches of life:
The beauty of human relationships and dignity, of nature and art, realized in striding toward a bright tomorrow... Without a history, a culture, without creative art inspiring to these senses, mankind stumbles in a chasm of despair and pessimism.
My work takes shape around images and ideas that are centered within the vertex of a black life experience. A nitty-gritty ghetto experience - resulting in contradictory emotions. Anguish - hope - love - despair - happiness - faith - lack of faith - dreams. Stubbornly holding on to an elusive romantic belief that the people of this land cannot always be insensitive to the dictates of justice or deaf to the voice of humanity."
The folio's six prints are numbered from No.1 to No.6 and include respective details of the medium and sizes of the original works. The inside back cover of the folio includes biographical information on White. Awards, Collections, Publications, Exhibitions, etc, together with a large photograph of the artist in his studio. “We are all fugitives,” the artist said of the Wanted Poster works; “I feel that at this point I have to make an emphatic statement about how I view the expression, the condition of this world and of my people . . . my own kind of way, of making an indictment.”
The African American painter, printmaker, and teacher Charles Wilbert White attended The Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York City and later taught at the George Washington Carver School in New York (1943-1945) and was artist-in-residence at Howard University in Washington, DC, in 1945. White's work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
In 1970, Heritage Gallery published a set of prints from Charles White's WANTED poster series, recognized in its time and now considered White’s most famous group of work. The images in the series draw on advertisements for slave auctions and wanted posters for escaped slaves found in a cache of old newspapers from the antebellum South given to the artist by a friend. Faces and bodies are framed by stenciled letters, numbers, and pointing hands that appear collaged or stamped onto crumpled backgrounds. The abstract patterns surrounding the figures are among the vivid visual devices White used to evoke a lineage of oppression of African Americans. Far from having ended, the artist witnessed the continuation of this culture, enacted on people he knew. The folio contained six prints and was introduced on the inside cover with the following text by White, dated January 1970:
"The substance of man is such that he has to satisfy the needs of life with all his senses. His very being cries out for these senses to appropriate the true riches of life:
The beauty of human relationships and dignity, of nature and art, realized in striding toward a bright tomorrow... Without a history, a culture, without creative art inspiring to these senses, mankind stumbles in a chasm of despair and pessimism.
My work takes shape around images and ideas that are centered within the vertex of a black life experience. A nitty-gritty ghetto experience - resulting in contradictory emotions. Anguish - hope - love - despair - happiness - faith - lack of faith - dreams. Stubbornly holding on to an elusive romantic belief that the people of this land cannot always be insensitive to the dictates of justice or deaf to the voice of humanity."
The folio's six prints are numbered from No.1 to No.6 and include respective details of the medium and sizes of the original works. The inside back cover of the folio includes biographical information on White. Awards, Collections, Publications, Exhibitions, etc, together with a large photograph of the artist in his studio. “We are all fugitives,” the artist said of the Wanted Poster works; “I feel that at this point I have to make an emphatic statement about how I view the expression, the condition of this world and of my people . . . my own kind of way, of making an indictment.”
The African American painter, printmaker, and teacher Charles Wilbert White attended The Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York City and later taught at the George Washington Carver School in New York (1943-1945) and was artist-in-residence at Howard University in Washington, DC, in 1945. White's work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.