Mamie Harrington

1985

Sylvia Snowden

Painter, American, born 1942

Thickly textured daubs of crimson and brick red, flame and pumpkin orange, butter yellow, and acid green swirl amid a background of dark, pine green to our left and royal blue to our right in this abstract, horizontal painting. Eventually we realize that the reds, oranges, yellow, and bright green create the abstracted form of a person. The head is cut off over the nose, but we see the wide nostrils of the nose and the full mouth, which angles up to our left. The arm to our left extends along the top edge of the painting, and the other arm bends in a hairpin curve. The hands are oversized with thick fingers. Two breasts droop down the body. The person’s right leg, to our left, also bends in a hairpin turn and the other leg extends off the bottom edge of the painting. The paint is so thickly applied that it casts shadows as it swirls across the Masonite.
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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr. [1952-1997], Washington, by 1989;[1] gift 1996 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] According to the artist; see the notes of her visit to the NGA on 28 January 2020, in NGA curatorial files. The painting was included in the travelling exhibition of the Tibbs collection that began its multi-year tour in January 1989.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1989

  • African-American Artists, 1880-1987: Selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, more than twenty venues, January 1989 - November 1992, no. 62, fig. 55.

Bibliography

2021

  • Donovan, Patricia A. "Permanence in This Changing World: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment Challenge Grant." Art for the Nation no. 64 (Fall 2021): 3, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q46640789


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