2022 Highlights

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) frequently recorded his ideas and observations in notes and sketches, regardless of subject matter. More of Leonardo’s drawings have survived than those by any other artist of the Italian Renaissance. Dian Woodner, who has donated many works over the years to the National Gallery of Art, has now given the museum Leonardo’s Grotesque Head of an Old Woman (1489/1490), one of a series of some 30 studies, identical in small format, style, and technique.

These drawings represent Leonardo’s most sustained exploration of human physiognomy. Drawing as a system for studying nature and preparing other works of art—as the most basic system of representation in the Western tradition—was barely a generation old when he made these drawings, between c. 1495 and 1506/1508. Leonardo, who owned the principal early treatises on physiognomy and wrote about it in his notebooks, was the first artist to take that system beyond ideal types. He used it to attempt the most minute physical variations and to reach beyond surface appearance to evoke personality and convey character.

Like the other imaginary heads, this drawing appears to have been a stand-alone exercise. It helped to prepare and inform the unprecedented range and subtlety of human expression in Leonardo’s paintings. His Milanese followers would take these studies literally. This old woman appears in several contemporary copies—the National Gallery possesses one by Francesco Melzi, Leonardo’s closest follower—and as a new type in various paintings, even north of the Alps. The influence of these drawings never waned in European art, inspiring all later physiognomic studies and laying the foundation of caricature, which flourished in 18th-century England.

Imaginary but utterly individual, this woman is an exquisite example of this type of drawing. It depicts the head and bust of an aged woman with an elaborate coiffure and wearing a small tiara. Her physical peculiarities are pronounced, and she is emblematic of the ravages of time and the fading of physical beauty. Leonardo uses a few strokes of the pen to suggest the shriveled skin, the low and receding forehead, as well as the small aquiline nose, while the lower lip and chin are almost nonexistent. The lines that describe the small folds in the upper lip, nearly imperceptible, indicate the lack of teeth. The curved but wavering lines that describe the woman's shapeless bosom, complete with a carnation inserted in the laced-up bodice of the dress, are echoed by the opposing curve of her back, resembling a small hump.

This drawing also reflects Leonardo's interests in "jests" and "puzzles," consistent with a taste for visual and verbal play at the Sforza court in Milan, with which Leonardo was associated for 17 years. The frequency with which he drew grotesque heads is inspired by his continuous research of the monstrous, the astounding, and the unusual—alongside his pursuit of the beautiful and the sublime. These two contrasting aspects coexisted in the mind and work of Leonardo and constitute two of the major spheres around which his studies turned. This woman’s fallen chin and exaggerated scowl could be the stuff of crude humor. But the dignity of her pose, held firm in the profile of official portraiture, the touching accent of the carnation at her breast, and what seems a self-possession in the eye elevate her toward a complete being, of distinct form and inseparable being. This is the first time in the history of art that an individual existence is rendered so attentively and completely.

This group of drawings comes down directly from Leonardo’s studio with an uninterrupted and very distinguished provenance. The group was in the possession of the dukes of Chatsworth by 1723. This drawing is one of four that were sold at Christie’s, London, in 1984. One was acquired by the Getty, two by a private collector in New York, and this one by Ian Woodner, who assembled an extraordinary collection of over 1,000 old master and modern drawings, making him one of the 20th century's most important collectors. More than 150 works from his collection now reside at the National Gallery. While Woodner gave some works himself in the 1980s, the majority have been donated by his daughters, Dian and Andrea, both of whom have also made other gifts and have pledged works from their personal collections.

The drawing has been on deposit at the National Gallery since it was exhibited in 1999 and was pledged by Dian in 2017. It becomes the National Gallery’s second Leonardo drawing, joining a sheet of studies acquired with Armand Hammer’s collection in 1991. There are just nine other Leonardo drawings in American public collections: in addition to those from the Chatsworth sale, one more at the J. Paul Getty Museum, one at the Morgan Library and Museum, and six at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Grotesque Head of an Old Woman has been included in several exhibitions held at the National Gallery, including: The Touch of the Artist: Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections (1995–1996); Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century (2000–2001); Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections (2006); Arcimboldo, 1526–1593: Nature and Fantasy (2010–2011); and The Woodner Collections: Master Drawings from Seven Centuries (2017).

The National Gallery is the home of Leonardo da Vinci's haunting and hypnotic masterpiece, Ginevra de' Benci (c. 1474/1478), the only painting by the master in the Americas.

Duncan Phyfe (1768–1854) was the premier furniture maker in New York during the first half of the 19th century. Working in a refined neoclassical style, he won the admiration of wealthy homeowners in New York, Philadelphia, and the South. The National Gallery of Art has been given an important center table by Phyfe dating to 1825–1830 from the collection of John B. Bolton.

Featuring a tripod pillar-and-claw base, the table has a circular top composed of a rayed pattern of book-matched, flame-grained mahogany veneers. A star-shaped disk of light-colored burlwood sits at the center. Lighter and more mobile than traditional card tables, this example has a top that tilts up, allowing it to be tucked into the corner of a room where its surface could still be admired. The veneered pattern resembles those created by a kaleidoscope—an optical device that won international popularity after it was patented by the Scottish scientist David Brewster in 1817. Phyfe may have been directly inspired in his design by looking through a kaleidoscope. The table appears to have held personal significance for Phyfe. He gave it to his daughter, possibly as a wedding gift in 1825.

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (1639–1709), called Baciccio, was the leading painter in late 17th-century Rome. He combined the brilliant color, fluid movement, and decorative extravagance of his Genoese training with the plasticity and mystical fervor of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), with whom he collaborated for almost 20 years. The National Gallery of Art has acquired Baciccio’s drawing The Finding of Moses (c. 1685/1690), the first work by the artist in any medium to enter the collection. Not only does this work demonstrate Baciccio’s relationship to sculpture and help to explain the transition from high baroque to the rococo, but it also advances the National Gallery’s representation of Genoese draftsmanship.          

The Finding of Moses recalls the popularity of this subject in Genoese art of the period, specifically of Paolo Veronese’s (1528–1588) many versions of the theme. The depiction of space ranges from a dense portrayal of the foreground to a light sketch of the background, while the movement of the figures is simultaneously sculptural and effortlessly mobile. A rich layering of techniques implies that the palette Baciccio used to create the work is unusually large and saturated for a drawing of the period. Despite the scale and economy of the work, the rhyming gestures and facial expressions of the figures portray sincere surprise, concern, and tenderness. This drawing reveals a creative process that is systematic, but completely personal, and demonstrates the Genoese preference for highly finished and marketable graphic works.

The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired a photograph by Grit Kallin-Fischer (1897–1973)—an example of the pioneering contributions of women to the photographic innovation taking place in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Untitled (Freddo Bortoluzzi as Angel) (c. 1928–1930) is the first work by Kallin-Fischer to enter the collection and depicts her friend, the artist Alfredo "Freddo" Bortoluzzi (1905–1995), who went on to become a dancer and choreographer. The two met as students at the Bauhaus, an experimental art school in Dessau.
 
Kallin-Fischer was an established painter when she enrolled in the Bauhaus in 1926. She took courses with many noteworthy artists, including Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. She also worked in László Moholy-Nagy's metal workshop alongside Marianne Brandt. Kallin-Fischer and Bortoluzzi both participated in Oskar Schlemmer's radical theater workshop, which completely reimagined the discipline. Their friendship is documented in the portraits they later made of each other. Kallin-Fischer took several photographs of Bortoluzzi performing as an ethereal being. Wearing white makeup and dressed in a simple white sheath, he has a pair of wings that seem to sprout from his neck. A striking study of tonality, Kallin-Fischer's skill is revealed in her deft cropping of the picture. She has used the structure of a window to create a frame around her subject, an angel who looks down from above.

This highly detailed and exquisite portrait depicts the 16th-century musician Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni (b. 1561­–at least 1610) by the most productive woman artist of the late 16th century, the Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana. This portrait is among Fontana’s best preserved and most accomplished surviving works in the genre. A rare depiction of a 16th-century woman musician by a 16th-century woman artist, this painting tells the story of two accomplished women who were able to overcome obstacles in a patriarchal society to succeed in the artistic spheres of painting and music.

Fontana died just before her 62nd birthday after a highly successful career. Trained by her father, Prospero Fontana (1512–1597), in the late mannerist style, and most famous for her portraits of noblewomen, she produced her first dateable works around 1575. In addition to portraits, she painted secular and religious subjects, including altarpieces for churches (a rarity in the period), portraits of scholars, and mythological nudes—a subject that was unheard of for women in the period. In 1577, Fontana married Gian Paolo Zappi (c. 1555–1615), who acted as her business manager; she supported her family, which included 11 children, with the profits from her painting. Fontana is one of 68 known women artists from Bologna in the early modern period and was a trailblazer for women artists who succeeded her.

This small carved wood and painted statue by Luisa Roldán is the first work by a woman sculptor from before c. 1850 to enter the National Gallery’s collection. Widely accepted as a work by Roldán on stylistic grounds, it shares close similarities with a range of sculptures that are widely acknowledged to be by her.

Born in Seville, Roldán was the daughter of Pedro Roldán, one of the city’s most accomplished sculptors. Her introduction to sculpture most likely came from Pedro, with whom she worked in close partnership. At the age of 19, she left home to marry one of her father’s studio assistants, with whom she set up a workshop and began undertaking commissions. Some of her earliest works, identifiable by style, include various life-size figures in painted wood for altarpieces in Seville and processional floats (paseos) that reflect but differ from her father’s style.

In 1688 Roldán and her husband moved to Madrid, likely in expectation of an appointment at the court of King Carlos II. Eventually, she was awarded the royal title of escultora de cámara, which did not prove especially lucrative. She turned to specializing in painted terracotta scenes. When Felipe V ascended to the throne in 1701, she was reappointed to the Spanish court. Lauded for her accomplishments as a sculptor, she nevertheless died destitute, unable to pay for a funeral. On the day she died, she received recognition as an “Accademica di merito” from the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.

Giorgio Fossati (1705–1785), born in Switzerland but active in Italy, was an architect, writer, stage designer, draftsman, and printmaker. The National Gallery of Art has acquired Raccolta di Varie Favole delineate ed incise in rame (1744), a book that was issued in six parts and bound in two volumes featuring letterpress text and 216 full-page illustrations. The first major work by Fossati to enter the National Gallery's collection, these volumes feature their original 18th-century Venetian vellum binding boards and illustrations inked and printed in a different color, including hues of red, blue, and green. Fossati's etchings depicting the fables of Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine targeted an international audience with text written in Italian as well as French—the cosmopolitan language of the 18th century. Some of Fossati's images reference earlier printed works, including Albrecht Dürer's woodcut The Rhinoceros (1515).

The National Gallery of Art has acquired Bust of Francesco I d'Este (c. 1890/1900), a dynamic wash drawing by Italian portrait painter Giovanni Boldini (1842–1931). This rare work captures, in variations of brown and blue, Gian Lorenzo Bernini's (1598–1680) bust of the Duke of Modena, Francesco I d'Este (1610–1658), now in the Galleria Estense at Modena. Boldini created his work during the height of his success as a society portrait painter in Paris.

The dramatic curls and vigorous movement in the drapery found in Bernini's marble resonate with Boldini's equally theatrical style. The drawing portrays the head in full profile and exaggerates the essential features of the sculpture, eliminating the complication of the lace collar and the hint of armor. While broad loose brushstrokes dominate the area around the bust, the area below the mantle has been left mostly blank, except for a small drop of wash and the artist's signature.

The drawing relates to several works from the same period, such as those by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), with whom Boldini is often compared. Historically significant, the Bust of Francesco I d'Este helps explain the evolution of abstract form in the work of Italian artists of the period, from their very first attempts to the Macchiaioli and the futurists. These groups disengaged from representation in favor of a more extravagant personal gestural style.

The work joins three contemporary compositions by Boldini in the National Gallery's collection: a chalk portrait drawing, a drypoint portrait of James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), and an oil painting on wood. The drawing of Francesco I d’'ste exemplifies the artist's iconic style and sensibility, broadens the holdings of fin-de-siècle artists, and bridges the divide between earlier 19th-century impressionism and 20th-century modernism.

Celebrated for his hard-edged abstract and expressionistic paintings, Freddy Rodríguez (b. 1945) explores Caribbean and Latinx history, often focusing on the Dominican Republic’s indigenous and colonial past as well as its history of enslavement, turbulent contemporary history, and the migration of Dominicans to the United States. Rodríguez’s artistic practice and subjects embody his commitment to aesthetic and political freedom. The National Gallery of Art has acquired Paradise for a Tourist Brochure (1990), an important work from a series devoted to unmasking the tactics of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.

Among the most ambitious works in this series, Paradise for a Tourist Brochure features a large butterfly suspended over a painted and collaged background of full-sized rectangular sheets of pages from the arts section of The New York Times. Begun during the exposure of the United States’ involvement in Central America during the late 1980s, the series was triggered by the U.S. intervention in Panama in 1989. For the artist, butterflies symbolize silent witnesses to the atrocities of life in the Americas since the Conquest. Underscoring this connection, the artist transcribed the word "paradise" in hand-painted script 44 times over the surface of the painting. This repetition, and the title that conjures the superficiality of tourist paraphernalia, suggest the duplicity of Trujillo’s rule. Three painted bullet holes dripping in red paint evoking blood and handprints on the lower register suggesting the scene of a crime disrupt these idyllic references. The painting’s title is also a wry reference to how tourists often view the Caribbean as paradise and overlook the region’s violent past.  

Since the early 1980s Rodríguez has used ephemeral materials linked to the New York art scene to comment on the racial and social exclusions of the mainstream art world. Working between foreground (painted elements) and background (collage), Rodríguez equates Trujillo’s dictatorial regime to the power wielded by art galleries, museums, auction houses, and critics who decide what is worthy of being sold, displayed, collected, studied, and preserved. The collaged elements function as a time capsule circa 1990, highlighting galleries, artists, and terminology that once held sway. Even though several ads and articles mention African American and Latin American artists, including Benny Andrews (1930–2006) and Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), whose self-portrait Rodriguez surrounds with rays of red paint, they are dwarfed by the references to American art and its major established figures, including Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), Franz Kline (1910–1962), and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956).

Mariano Rodríguez (1912–1990) was a major figure of the Vanguardia (Cuban avant-garde), a multifaceted group of artists who were deeply committed to forging a modern Cuban art in the first half of the 20th century. He was part of the second generation of artists who absorbed and transformed global art movements to express Cuban national culture. The National Gallery of Art has acquired Rodríguez’s Reunión en la OEA (1965), an ambitious painting from the artist’s later career.

The painting is tied to the rise of Nueva Figuración (New Figuration), a mid-20th-century Latin American artistic movement that merged abstract and figurative tendencies to express the human condition in a time of global crisis. Reunión en la OEA specifically critiques the politics of the Organization of American States (OAS) after it suspended Cuba, a founding member of the organization, following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Mariano, an avowed communist and supporter of Fidel Castro, responded to this rejection in his portrayal of a "meeting at the OAS" as a grotesque and dehumanizing scene. Scatological references, bloodied and wounded figures, and monstrous forms reminiscent of Francisco Goya’s (1746–1828) Black paintings dominate the composition. On the right-hand side, three generals stand at command, perhaps referring to emergent authoritarian regimes in Latin America, while the red and white striped pattern in the upper left recalls the United States flag, a reference to the nation that led the effort to eject Cuba from the OAS.  

During the 1930s Mariano studied in Mexico, where he was drawn to artists affiliated with the Contemporáneos magazine, especially his teacher, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who favored easel painting and aesthetic experimentation and shunned politically explicit art. After returning to Cuba, Mariano devoted himself to painting scenes of daily life populated by monumental and mythical figures evocative of a multiracial Cuban population. In the 1940s he became known for his rooster paintings, portraying monumental and close-up views of this ubiquitous animal of the Cuban countryside.

Mariano Rodríguez was a founding member of the influential cultural group centered around the magazine Orígenes (1945–1956). He embraced a neo-baroque sensibility that favored expressionism and references to Cuban subjects. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Mariano traveled to the United States, where he encountered the work of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), as well as the abstract art scene in New York. By the 1950s he began fusing geometric and biomorphic forms, but never fully abandoned figuration.

The National Gallery of Art has been given 44 gelatin silver prints by the esteemed documentary photographer Wayne Miller (1918–2013). Given on behalf of his family and the artist’s estate, the group of photographs comprise a rich variety of themes central to his career. These are the first works by the artist to enter the collection and they deepen our holdings of documentary photography from the 1940s with compelling pictures that convey the horrific experience of war as well as the fullness of Black life in post-war Chicago.
 
Born in Chicago, Miller pursued studies in banking and business at the University of Illinois but turned his attention to photography in the early 1940s. He enlisted in the navy after the start of World War II as was assigned to the Naval Aviation Unit led by the famed photographer Edward Steichen (1879–1973). Miller documented the war mainly in the Pacific and was among the first Americans to take pictures of the devastation in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. This experience convinced Miller of the importance of using photography to bring people together in meaningful ways. He returned to Chicago and spent two years photographing on the city’s South Side engaging with the vibrant African American community. Miller was awarded two consecutive Guggenheim Fellowships in support of his project which includes pictures of daily life, street scenes, and compelling pictures of workers, such as a railroad maintenance man. Captured in mid-stride as he carries air hoses used to clean passenger cars, the young man assertively returns the photographer’s gaze. Other works included in the gift are photographs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s funeral procession in Washington, DC, as well as intimate portraits of the photographer’s family.

Born in Trapani, Sicily, Carla Accardi (1924–2014) was a prominent figure of postwar Italian art and the Italian feminist movement. After studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Accardi moved to Rome in 1946 and became a founding member of the Forma I group (1947–1951). Emerging during the postwar era of intense political and aesthetic debate in Italy, the Forma I artists attempted to reconcile Marxist ideals with abstract form. An exquisite example of Accardi’s experimental practice, Rossorosa (1966) is the first painting by Accardi to enter the collection of the National Gallery of Art.

Accardi is best known for her works in Sicofoil, a transparent plastic used in commercial packaging, which she was introduced to in 1965. Sicofoil inspired her to explore its unique qualities, which she enhanced through such techniques as painting, wrapping, and stretching. In Rossorosa, wavelike forms are painted in red varnish on a sheet of clear Sicofoil suspended in front of pink cardboard. The work exemplifies Accardi’s preference for combinations of maximum-intensity hues and bold patterns to create powerful optical effects.

Rossarosa also speaks to the history of 20th-century Italian art and critical discourse. The wavelike shapes establish a symmetrical pattern reminiscent of the dynamic, repeated forms of Italian futurist artist Giacomo Balla (1871–1958). Like the works of such contemporaries as Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) and Piero Manzoni (1933–1963), Rossorosa disrupts the homogenous surface of oil on canvas of conventional painting, challenging the definition of what a painting is.

Anticipating the use of industrially produced soft materials by the Arte Povera artists during the late 1960s, Accardi’s experiments in Sicofoil would become a central reference in the writings of the art critic Carla Lonzi (1931–1982), with whom Accardi cofounded the Rivolta Femminile (Women’s Revolt) collective in 1970. Well established during her lifetime, Accardi’s renown has continued to grow since her death, as testified by the inclusion of her paintings in the 2022 Venice Biennale curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) works almost exclusively with recycled tires to transform familiar symbols of urban waste and blight into extraordinary compositions of renewal. The National Gallery of Art has acquired Egress (c. 2000), the first sculptural work by Booker to enter the collection, joining her woodcut print, Untitled (2011).

In Egress, numerous long, spiraling bands and short, spiky shards of rubber appear to unfurl from within and pour over and around the pedestal. The layers curl, pile, and protrude to form a mound that is simultaneously monstrous and playful, hard and soft, abstract and representational. While the plantlike, layered form recalls ivy or fern, the tracks, treads, and manufacturer name (Cooper) embossed on the sidewalls remind us of the medium’s previous automotive life.

Booker’s artistic practice is highly physical, from transporting the tires to reshaping them with machinery. Her use of discarded rubber references industrialization and factory labor as well as transportation, consumer culture, and environmental concerns. Her process of salvaging beauty from scraps of black rubber serves as a metaphor for Black American experiences of struggle, strength, and survival. Details of the tires demonstrate the capacity for meaning in Booker’s forms: the varied tones that parallel human diversity, the treads suggestive of African scarification and textile designs, and the visible wear and tear that evokes the physical marks of human aging and inevitable distress in life. As she has said, “[my] intention is to translate simple yet complex materials into imagery that stimulates people to reconsider the expressive nature of art and how broad, complex cultural transformations can continue to be expressed through common materials.”

Sonia Gomes (b. 1948), a contemporary Afro-Brazilian artist who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil, is known for her mixed-media works made of fabric, wire, and other materials. The National Gallery of Art has just acquired Correnteza (Current) (2018), a sculpture from her Raízes (Roots) series.

Gomes brings the aesthetic and the human together in memorable sculptures that are at once traditionally Brazilian and fluently contemporary. Most important to Gomes's practice is the fact that the pieces of fabric she works with are almost always given to her. “I feel that when people give me these items, they are bestowing a great responsibility on me, a sort of plea asking me not to let them die,” she has said.

Textiles continue to be at the heart of Gomes's work as she addresses floors, walls, and ceilings: among her many series are reliefs, hanging works (Acordes Naturais), and, most recently, wrappings around branches (Raízes). Correnteza epitomizes the blurring of “high” and “low” and of international modernism and Afro-Brazilian tradition found in Gomes’s approach. In this work, the drawing-in-space of a modernist like David Smith (1906–1965) meets the fabric work of a Brazilian outsider like Arthur Bispo do Rosário (1909–1989) (one of Gomes’s heroes). Other artists in the National Gallery’s collection who have used fabric to explore similar intersections include Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015), Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), Al Loving (1935–2005), Thornton Dial (1928–2016), Ernesto Neto (b. 1964), and Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980).

Gomes was born in Caetanópolis, Brazil, a center of textile manufacturing. Her mother died when she was three years old and she was raised for three years by her maternal grandmother, a shaman who performed folk cures and who twisted fabric to make rodilhas, cloth turbans. When Gomes returned to her father's house, she absorbed European culture in his extensive library. At age 28 she moved to Belo Horizonte, capital of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, and eventually studied law but continued to make her own clothing and jewelry. In 1988, when she was 40, Gomes started to take free art classes at the Guignard School. She left her law career in 1993 to devote herself to art. In 2015, she gained international renown when curator Okwui Enwezor included her in the Venice Biennale. Her solo exhibition in 2018 at MASP, the São Paulo Art Museum, was the institution’s first ever by an Afro-Brazilian woman. She currently lives and works in São Paulo.

Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902–2002) is one of the most important figures in 20th-century Latin American photography. Rejecting stereotypes, he was deeply influenced by the Mexican muralists and interested in depicting the Indigenous heritage of the Mexican people. Donated by the Nancy Rutter Clark Collection to the National Gallery, Retrato de lo Enterno (Portrait of the Eternal) (1935) is the first vintage print by the artist to enter the collection, joining 30 other, later prints.

Retrato de lo Enterno (Portrait of the Eternal) is a vintage print of one of this photographer’s most celebrated works. It depicts Isabel Villaseñor—a noted post-revolutionary Mexican sculptor, painter, printmaker, poet, and songwriter—looking into a mirror as she pulls her hair back from her partially lit face. Using sunlight, as the poet Langston Hughes wrote of Bravo’s work, that is "a quiet veil making the shadows like velvet," Bravo transformed an everyday event into a poetic reflection on beauty, vanity, and the transitory nature of life.

World-renowned American sculptor Richard Hunt (b. 1935) has received commissions for more than 150 public works since the late 1960s. Although best known for his welded metal sculptures, he is also a prolific draftsman with drawings that include site sketches conceptualizing a work in a particular environment, studies of forms and spatial relationships, fanciful abstract compositions, and robust, large-scale "finished" drawings. The Chicago collector John B. Davidson has recently donated two drawings by Hunt to the National Gallery of Art: a large, undated sheet of exploratory studies and a finished drawing from 1974. The first offers wonderful insights into the artist’s ruminations on abstracted forms unconnected to a specific sculpture, while the latter is the first major independent drawing by Hunt to enter the National Gallery’s collection.

Hunt’s sculptural sensibilities are evident in the sense of depth in this drawing. The imposing, abstract form—hovering between biomorphic and architectural/mechanical—appears suspended in space, emphasized by the cropping of the forms at the edges of the sheet. Hunt frequently combines natural and industrial elements in his work, exploring the universal tensions between the sense of freedom associated with the natural world and the restrictive rigors of man-made environments. His work challenges the viewer to contemplate these incongruities. The extension of the "figure" into the viewer’s space seen in the finished drawing also reflects Hunt’s fascination with the possibilities of interaction and engagement of the viewer in his sculpted work.

Winfred Rembert's (1945–2021) deeply personal and visually striking art emerges from his experience growing up in the American South during the Jim Crow era and often celebrates his birthplace of Cuthbert, Georgia. The National Gallery of Art has acquired its first work by the artist, G.S.P. Reidsville (2013), a striking composition that sparks conversation about US history and engages with other works in the collection, such as paintings by African American artists Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippin.

Rembert survived a near-lynching and seven years in the Georgia prison system, experiences that he documented in a recent memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave (Bloomsbury, 2021), which was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. After his release, and encouraged by his wife, Rembert used leatherworking techniques that he learned from a fellow prisoner to create autobiographical paintings with cut, tooled, and dyed leather. In G.S.P. Reidsville, Rembert illustrated his experience of working on a chain gang while serving time at the Georgia State Prison (G.S.P.) in Reidsville. The central panel depicts the chain gang working in front of the prison, while the enlarged surrounding figures collectively form an imposing frame. The pattern of black-and-white uniforms, black-and-orange soil, and red-and-brown sledgehammers creates a work of mesmerizing complexity. With its intricate division of space into numerous panels, the composition conveys to the viewer a sense of being trapped—much as the figures themselves are trapped.

Genesis Tramaine (b. 1983) creates expressionist portraits of men and women that combine vigorous handling of materials with intuitive, spiritual inspiration. The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired its first painting by Tramaine, Clinging unto the Lord (2021). Blending a provocative use of color with an urban-inspired, mixed-media approach, she describes her practice as focused on the shape and definition of the "American Black Face" and as using exaggerated features to capture the spirited emotions of the untapped, underrepresented souls of Black people.

Enlivened by New York graffiti from the 1980s and imagined images of gospel hymns sung Sunday morning during church, Clinging unto the Lord is typical of her recent work: head-and-shoulder portraits based on individual sitters or biblical figures and painted in a trance-like frenzy that can be compared to speaking in tongues. Tramaine's Christian faith informs all aspects of her practice, from prayers said before, during, and after painting, to evangelical titles and inscriptions on the tacking margins of her canvases, to small "spirit guide" figures depicted within the larger work.

Rashid Johnson (b. 1977) is a highly celebrated contemporary artist who explores African American themes and issues of racial, cultural, and gender identity in a range of media. The National Gallery of Art has acquired its first photograph by Johnson, The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Emmett) (2008, printed 2022), which depicts two portraits of one individual (one inverted left to right from the other).  

In 2008, inspired by Black middle-class clubs formed in the early 20th century to aid fellow African Americans as well as by Afrofuturist thinkers such as Sun Ra, Johnson invented a mystical secret society—The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club. The name references the term "New Negro," coined by critic Alain Locke in 1925 to describe a rising generation of self-confident, assertive, and socially aware Black intellectuals. Johnson made a series of portraits from 2008 to 2009 that depicts the members of this fictional men's club.

This picture's title also refers to Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy who was brutally murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi in 1955. The devastating photograph of Till's mangled body published in Jet magazine at the insistence of his mother may seem disconnected from Johnson's portrait of a well-dressed, well-groomed sitter. But this extraordinarily multilayered work offers yet another reference: the model's parted hair and goatee recall portraits of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, reputedly the most photographed man of the 19th century.

William Christenberry (1936–2016) is best known for his artistic exploration of place, in particular the Black Belt region of Alabama, where he spent his childhood in Hale County. Working in a wide variety of media, including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and assemblage, Christenberry focused on architecture, abandoned structures, and nature, and he studied the psychology and effects of place and memory. The National Gallery of Art has acquired the sculpture Memory Form II (1997–1998), a gift from Stephen Bennett Phillips in honor of Sandra Deane Christenberry, the artist’s widow.

In 1968 Christenberry moved to Washington, DC, where he quickly became a revered teacher and mentor at the Corcoran School of Art. However, his art remained focused on the landscape and built environment of Alabama, where he would return each summer to photograph shacks and stores and to collect signs and other artifacts that reflected the spirit of the place. His efforts were not simply nostalgic. Christenberry had an eye for decay and was deeply aware of the dark history of the region, with depictions of Ku Klux Klan hoods occasionally appearing in his work. Memory Form II is somewhat unusual in the artist’s oeuvre. Rather than a detailed, realistic model of a particular building, it is a poetic evocation of a general type of structure common in the South—the so-called dogtrot house with a central breezeway, which –Christenberry has reduced in this sculpture to a mysterious opening. As a result of the artist’s patient application of encaustic and paint to wood, the sculpture appears almost tomb-like, encased in time and memory.

The National Gallery of Art has acquired A Fleet at Sea (c. 1614), a major painting by the Haarlem artist Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (d. 1640). The first Dutch painter to specialize in seascapes and detailed portraits of specific ships, Vroom paved the way for later 17th-century marine painters with his lively, colorful, and harmonious compositions. A Fleet at Sea was featured in the 2018 exhibition Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. The National Gallery is grateful to Albert Beveridge and his late wife, Madzy, for their generous gift that has brought this important painting into the nation’s collection.

A Fleet at Sea portrays a historic event that took place many years before Vroom painted its likeness. A stiff breeze propels the billowing sails of a Dutch fluyt ship from the mouth of the Maas River onto the choppy waves of the North Sea. On the right side of the painting, the skyline of Den Briel, with its squat church tower, identifies the exact location of the scene. Vroom has also included several details that suggest that the heavily armed cargo ship in the foreground may be the Roode Leeuw (Red Lion), which left its home port of Rotterdam in 1597 for a well-documented voyage to the distant shores of South America and the Caribbean. The vessel’s figurehead is a bright red lion, and the flag of the province Holland (also with a red lion) appears atop the main mast. The inclusion of the municipal arms of Rotterdam on the red, white, and blue Dutch flag on the stern pole may be a nod to the Roode Leeuw’s home port. Research continues into a possible alternative identification of the ship as the Rotterdam-based Leeuwinne (Lioness), which rammed and destroyed Spanish galleys in 1602, an event that Vroom depicted in a 1617 painting.

Vroom’s extensive output in paintings and prints had a direct impact on the enormous popularity of marine painting in the Netherlands throughout the 17th century. His own sea voyages during the 1580s gave him a profound understanding of the architecture and rigging of ships, and of their interaction with wind and water in a wide range of conditions. Vroom’s career coincided with the dawn of Dutch global commercial expansion, and he received numerous lucrative commissions from shipowners, captains, and shareholders of the Dutch East and West India Companies.

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) is celebrated for the pioneering exhibitions of modern European art that he presented at his gallery 291 in New York between 1907 and 1917 and for his support of American artists. Photography, his greatest passion, was not only the medium he used to express himself, but also the touchstone he employed to evaluate art. Donated by the Clark Collection to the National Gallery, Untitled (Helen Kastor Fleischmann), c. 1917, is a stunning platinum/ palladium print that helps to expand our understanding of the evolution of Stieglitz's art.

Through the exhibitions he organized, the periodicals he published, and the example of his own work, Stieglitz played a central role in the acceptance of photography as a mode of artistic expression. He also championed the work of numerous American photographers from Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence H. White, and Edward Steichen to Paul Strand and Ansel Adams.

At the time Stieglitz took this picture, Helen Kastor Fleischmann, a wealthy cutlery heiress, was married to Leon Fleischmann, a poet and one of the many artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals who frequented Stieglitz’s gallery; she later married James Joyce’s son, Giorgio. Although Stieglitz described her in a 1917 letter to Georgia O’Keeffe as “pretty, vivacious,” he chose to focus on Fleischmann’s hands and legs rather than on her face. Most likely made in 1917, the picture is an early example of Stieglitz’s radical rethinking of the nature of a photographic portrait. Inspired by Auguste Rodin, Marius DeZayas, Francis Picabia, and other modernist artists, Stieglitz realized that a portrait need not capture a subject’s face but could allude to their character by portraying other elements of their body, or even abstract attributes. This was an idea he explored further in his portraits of O’Keeffe and others made from 1918 through the early 1920s.

After his death in 1946, his widow, O’Keeffe, assembled the foremost collection of his photographs and donated it to the National Gallery in 1949 and 1980. Numbering more than 1,600 pictures, the Key Set includes one print of every mounted photograph in Stieglitz’s possession at the time of his death. If there were different kinds of prints made from the same negative—platinum, palladium, gelatin silver, photogravure, or carbon—or different croppings, O’Keeffe put the finest examples of each into the Key Set.

The Key Set is an exceptional and unrivaled collection of Stieglitz’s art, but he did not always save a print of every photograph he made. In a few rare instances, important pictures have emerged that were not represented in the National Gallery’s collection, such as Untitled (Helen Kastor Fleischmann).

The daughter of Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia, Israeli artist Orit Hofshi (b. 1959) has gained increasing attention in recent years for her compelling, monumental works combining woodcut printing, drawing, and at times incorporating the carved woodblocks themselves. The history and founding of Israel and its ongoing conflicts with Palestine have informed her evocative, often desolate landscapes that explore universal themes of migration, displacement, and the toll that human “civilization” has taken on the land. The National Gallery has acquired Time… thou ceaseless lackey to eternity (2018), one of her largest polyptychs. Considered by the artist to be one of her masterworks, this is the first work by Hofshi to enter the National Gallery collection.

Comprised of four panels, this landscape setting is littered with structural remains and rocky outcroppings, navigated by near life-size figures. Implied forces of human and natural destruction as well as evolutionary changes over time coexist in this haunting vista that alludes to the romantic sublime, underscored by disquiet in the lack of specificity of location and timeframe. The figures appear as wanderers or vagabonds, relatively calm, even stoic, and somewhat detached from their surroundings, as if taking stock of circumstances along a journey or in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. There is also an autobiographical element to this work: the synagogue in the far-left panel represents a temple that was destroyed in the anti-Semitic rioting in Czechoslovakia where her parents once lived. The self-portrait figure in the foreground confronts the viewer with Hofshi's forceful gaze, compelling us to share in her role as witness to the consequences when we lose sight of our shared humanity and respect for the natural world that sustains us.

The emotional tensions between figures and setting—aimlessness, resignation, resilience, introspection, and expectation—are heightened by Hofshi’s technique that can be described as expressionist, tempered by realist elements. Her vigorously gouged woodcut line lends an urgency to her forms. Her varied approach to transferring ink from the woodblock by printing, rubbing, and offsetting, adding drawn elements, combining, and reusing woodblocks, and delineating interlocking forms by color all play into the sense of alienation and displacement and complex relationships within and between humankind and the natural world. Hofshi writes: “The landscapes are typically proposed as places, occupied and unoccupied, touched, and untouched, rarely fully committed in a specific context. In such dramatic natural contexts, I find an emphasized sense of evolution, time, and struggles, not only as records of natural phenomenon, but also as reflections of human history.”

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965) is best known as a painter who skillfully combines art history, queer politics, and popular culture into engaging, often fantastical figurative subjects. In 2011 Eisenman set her paints aside to delve into a year completely focused on printmaking, producing over 60 prints in woodcut, lithography, etching, aquatint, and monotype. The National Gallery’s recent acquisition, Beer Garden (2012–2017)—at nearly 4 feet square—stands out as her most monumental print to date and took five years to complete. This is the first work by Eisenman in any medium to enter the collection.

In this work, the artist appears in a distorted self-portrait in a reflection at the bottom of the raised beer stein in the foreground—as both observer and participant among a host of revelers engaged in a range of social interaction and debauched behavior at this popular drinking spot in her Brooklyn neighborhood. The variously caricatured, abstracted, and contorted figures, and wanton atmosphere suggest sources extending from cartoons and comics to French and German late 19th- and early 20th-century depictions of café night life.

Daniel Lind-Ramos (b. 1953) is one of the foremost contemporary artists born and based in Puerto Rico. Raised by a family of artisans and initially trained as painter, he later began to work in assemblage in a way that resonates with the making-do and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora and with everyday life in his hometown, Loíza. The National Gallery of Art has acquired its first work by Lind-Ramos, Figura de Poder (2016–2020).

Figura de Poder suggests multiple figures that represent power (poder), sound, and force, such as a carnival reveler, a protester, a musician, a construction worker or manual laborer, an animal, or an athlete. The sculpture features three horns that evoke a vejigante reveler, a central figure in the Festival de Santiago Apóstol celebrated in the days surrounding the Feast of Saint James on July 25, while the dominant red color is associated with Chango, the deity of iron and war that is linked to Saint Barbara. Strong musical elements are found throughout the work—a tambourine that doubles as a face, buckets that make up the central “body” of the figure, and a maraca held by one of the gloved hands in the center of the sculpture. They refer to carnival traditions, contemporary political protest, and African-derived music as a site of cultural resistance in the Americas. Other objects—the boxing glove and sneaker seen in the back of the sculpture—are in part autobiographical and suggest the ways in which sports figures like Muhammad Ali became powerful Black social and political forces. 

Lind-Ramos creates his assemblages from organic and found materials such as construction tarps, parts of palm tree trunks, and cinder blocks from Loíza, home to a historic Afro–Puerto Rican community and just east of the capital San Juan. His interest in these unconventional objects is also tied to his admiration of arte povera, the contemporary artistic movement that originated in Italy in the 1960s and relied on commonplace materials as a basis for artmaking. Drawing on music, sports, craft, and daily life, Lind-Ramos formed an arresting structure that evokes the indomitable spirit of Afro–Puerto Rican cultural practices and history.

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist who primarily works with themes related to identity, representation, mass media, and popular culture. The National Gallery has acquired his stainless-steel wall sculpture A Place to Call Home (Africa America Reflection) (2020), which draws a fictional map of an African American continent. It is the first sculpture by this celebrated artist to enter the collection.

Eight feet tall with a mirrored metal surface, A Place to Call Home outlines what appears to be the western hemisphere, but is actually North America nearly connected to Africa instead of South America. Maps, as this substitution implies, have often been used to represent the ideas and stories their makers want to tell rather than the actual topography. This map points to feelings of connection and detachment that many African Americans have toward Africa. As Thomas explains, a “mythical connection to Africa is embedded in your identity, but many people go to Africa looking for home and don’t find it because our roots are so diluted there. They also never felt at home in the U.S., where they were born. I wanted to make a place where African Americans come from.” And in reflecting all viewers, A Place to Call Home also creates opportunities for empathy across cultures.

Sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899–1988), is known for her monumental wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. The National Gallery of Art has recently been given Untitled (c. 1975), the first major relief by Nevelson to enter the collection, from Arne and Milly Glimcher, dedicated supporters of the artist.

A late work, Untitled resembles Nevelson’s classic, earlier work in that it consists largely of found pieces of black-painted wood that fit tightly within boxlike containers. Here, Nevelson incorporated large forms and open rhythms that contrast deliberately with the packed, labyrinthine quality visible in much of her other work. Her unique process transformed everyday materials into compositions that transcended space and altered the viewer’s perception. Dramatic rooms of monochromatic works placed on the floor and walls, and occasionally suspended from the ceiling, allowed the viewer to journey through Nevelson’s created worlds.

Born in Pereiaslav, in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), Nevelson came to the United States in 1905 as part of a wave of Jewish emigration, settling with her family first in Maine, then moving to New York City in 1920, where she studied drama and art. By 1960, Nevelson had established herself firmly within the male-dominated circle of her abstract expressionist peers, and by 1970 she had become an iconic figure known for her sprawling environments and outdoor sculptures as well as her dramatic self-presentation. She received numerous recognitions and awards throughout her lifetime, as well as two significant commissions—the “Louise Nevelson Plaza” in Lower Manhattan and the “Nevelson Chapel” of the Good Shepherd at St. Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan.

A pioneer of second-wave feminist and post­war Black nationalist aesthetics, Betye Saar’s (b. 1926) practice examines African American identity, spirituality, and cross-cultural connectedness. The Trickster (1994), recently acquired by the National Gallery of Art, reflects Saar’s continued introspection, her assertion of the aesthetic and conceptual power of African cultural forms, and the belief that art can be made from anything. This is her first assemblage to enter the National Gallery’s collection where it joins one print and two mixed media works by her.

Made from a seven-foot-tall antique heater adorned with a necklace of bells, chains, and vintage keys, The Trickster depicts Eshu, the trickster god of the Yoruba people that protects devotees while engaging in mischief. Saar has represented the trickster figure throughout her career, beginning in the early 1970s with hanging leather pieces. This totemic variation represents not only the enduring significance of the figure for Saar, but also demonstrates her command of her materials on a monumental scale.

Since 1969 Saar has produced potent, evocative assemblage sculptures that explore themes of race, gender, ancestry, and spirituality. Her work is part of a storied tradition of artists working with found objects in Southern California and aligned with multiple art historical movements, including Black Arts, feminist art, and Neo-Dada, while remaining a reflection of her personal history and singular view. Saar’s assemblage practice began with the reappropriation of racist memorabilia she encountered at flea markets and yard sales, turning hurtful imagery into symbols of empowerment, most notably in the assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972). The collections of African and Oceanic art at the Field Museum in Chicago later sparked her interest in ancestral arts, ritual objects, and spiritual power. Saar’s symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the various cultural, political, and technological contexts in which it exists.

The National Gallery of Art has acquired Eko Skyscraper (2019) by Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983), the first work by this celebrated artist to enter the National Gallery’s collection.

Eko Skyscraper depicts a young Yoruba woman in front of a lush natural backdrop. The painting’s title holds keys to understanding the work, and the manner of its making: “Eko” refers to Lagos, the Nigerian city where the artist attended middle school, while “skyscraper” alludes to the figure’s threaded, structured hair style featured in a 1967 photograph taken in Kisangani, Congo, by Eliot Elis­­ofon, a documentary photographer. In the painting, Akunyili Crosby reversed the image in Elisofon’s photograph, amplified the sitter’s outward gaze, added a new backdrop, and rendered the picture in warm gradients of orange. Unlike traditional portraits or documentary photographs where subjects pose or are recorded live, Akunyili Crosby builds her imagery at a remove across place and time. In addition to various archives, the artist sources the images for her African and African diasporic subjects from a mix of her own photographs, magazines, and online resources, all of which combine to reflect the experience and consciousness of an artist who emigrated to the United States from her native Nigeria.

David C. Driskell (1931–2020) was an accomplished artist, celebrated curator, and one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of African American art. The National Gallery of Art has acquired its first painting by Driskell, Current Forms: Yoruba Circle (1969), which was inspired by the West African aesthetic and religious traditions that Driskell immersed himself in during travels to Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria beginning in 1969.

Current Forms: Yoruba Circle features the symbol of Shango, the orisha (deity) of fire, thunder, and justice. Shango was revered among communities of enslaved people in the Caribbean and the Americas and is still venerated by many from across the African Diaspora. In this painting, Shango’s circular head dominates the canvas, while the figure’s lower half contains calligraphic swirls and shapes evocative of Yoruba masks and motifs. Vibrant fields of pinks and blues frame and segment the figure of Shango, and the surface is animated by active strokes and splashes of purple, orange, and blue paint. Driskell merges color field and action painting with West African symbolism in a bold, compelling image that exemplifies his signature style.

Driskell had deep ties to the Washington, DC, area. He received his BA in art from Howard University in 1955 and an MFA from the Catholic University of America in 1962. He taught and chaired the art department at Howard University (1962–1966) and the department of art at the University of Maryland, College Park (1976­­–1998), which established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora in 2001.

Zanele Muholi (b. 1972, Umlazi, South Africa) is a celebrated self-described visual activist who has in the last two decades documented Black gay, lesbian, transgender, and intersex people in South Africa. The National Gallery of Art has acquired Muholi’s Ntozakhe II, (Parktown) (2016) from the series titled Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness (2012–present), in which the artist (who uses the pronouns they and their) turns the camera on themself to reclaim their blackness.

Drawing on the conventions of traditional portraits, fashion photographs, and ethnographic images, Muholi in Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness adorns themself with a variety of everyday objects—clothespins, scrubbing pads, latex gloves—to allude to their personal past, South Africa’s fraught history, and urgent global concerns, as well as sexual politics and cultural violence. By digitally darkening their skin and brightening the whites of their eyes, Muholi intensifies their own blackness to make these pictures call into question notions of beauty and pride. “I wanted to use my face so that people will always remember just how important our Black faces are, when confronted by them.” Echoing the words of the celebrated African American photographer Gordon Parks, Muholi asserts that they want to “teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves, to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.” Muholi further intensifies the confrontational nature of their photographs by making very large prints, often more than 11 feet high.

Ntozakhe II, (Parktown) is a powerful self-portrait in which the artist employs their body to confront “the politics of race and pigment.” The artist posed in a loose-fitting toga-like garment with a crown of hair donuts. Those props, along with the slight tilt of the chin, upturned gaze, and elongated neck, make Muholi look like the Statue of Liberty. Noting that the statue is green, Muholi wondered why it could not also be Black: “In some ways, yes, Ntozakhe is based on the Statue of Liberty, representing the idea of freedom—the freedom all women should have—as well as pride: pride in who we are as Black, female-bodied beings. But what kind of freedom are we talking about? What is the color of the Statue of Liberty? What race is the figure monumentalized as Lady Liberty?”