Alvin Hollingsworth
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In a 1971 interview with Ebony Magazine, Alvin Hollinsworth commented
on his African Jesus Christ painting, "I have always felt that Christ
was a Black man".
In 1970, Hollingsworth attracted widespread
critical acclaim with his exhibition," The Prophet," exhibited in the
Harbor Gallery and then on to the Studio Museum in Harlem and finally to
the Staten Island Museum. Romare Bearden compared Hollingsworth to
African American artist Harry O. Tanner in a review of his Prophet
series exhibited in 1970.
"Devil: No Horns, Burning in Hell " is
most likely from the same period and addresses themes of religion, race,
and allegory It features a bald, shirtless Black Man in profile. He has
accentuated pointed ears and stands stoically and impervious rising
flames surrounding him. Agitated bravura brush strokes combined with
vibrant color directly out of the tube characterize the paint
application's chromatic richness and tactile surface. This may be a
self-portrait depicting the artist's spirited inner state.
It is best viewed with a top gallery light to bring out color.
In 1965, Hollingsworth exhibited at the renowned Terry Dintenfass
Gallery, Ward Eggleston Gallery, New York and Lee Nordness Galleries,
New York . He took part in a panel discussion on the Harlem Black art
movement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Corcoran Art
Gallery.
He is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum,
The African Museum in Washington. Harvey B. Gantt Center for
African-American Arts+Culture, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Brooklyn
Museum, IBM Collection, Williams College Art Collection. Johnson
Publishing Art Collection. Chase Manhattan Bank. 1971 : Whitney Museum
of American Art Contemporary Black Artists in America exhibition.
Along
with E. Simms Campbell, Hollingsworth was on of the first comic book
artists/illustrators and then moved on to a career as a fine art
painter. From 1980 until retiring in 1998 he taught art as a professor
at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York. As a
painter, his subjects included such contemporary social issues as civil
rights for women and African Americans, as well as jazz and dance...
represented a "philosophical symbol of any of the modern prophets who
have been trying to show us the right way. To me, Malcolm X and Martin
Luther King are such prophets." An authority on fluorescent paint, he
worked in both representational and abstract art.
In the summer of 1963, Hollingsworth and fellow African-American
artists Romare Bearden and William Majors formed the group Spiral in
order to help the Civil Rights Movement through art exhibitions.] At
some point during the 1960s, he directed an art program teaching young
students commercial art and fine art at the Harlem Parents Committee
Freedom School.
Hollingsworth's parents cam from Barbados and settled
in Harlem in the early 1920s. He grew up in the center of flowering
African-American culture called the "Harlem Renaissance.
“Harlem was a
thriving community which pulsated with life, a convergence of sight,
sound and color, and a pivot for people of color. A community which
supported art created within its confines, jazz, poetry, murals,
sculpture, and paintings. This was the world Alvin grew up in.”
-Valliere Richard Auzenne, Hollingsworth biographer, Quoted in Ink-Slinger Profiles: A. C. Hollingsworth
“…when ‘Spiral’ came along, I really got involved. I had grown up in
a gang era. Bopping clubs and fighting chiefs were everywhere. And it
seemed to me that the pressures on minorities stemmed at least partially
from urbanism – the crowding, the competition, the slums, the
situations and conditions that the city creates. I felt that I could
make a contribution through my feeling about the city.”
-Al Hollingsworth in Black Art – An International Quarterly, 1977