From the Artist
I'm trying to contribute to the development of a kind of equality, visually...I'd like to contribute to heaven on earth, which I don't believe we're ever going to get. But these are the things. And I don't want to sacrifice the artistic mirrors of my work in the process. So that is my problem. I want to show the Negro as the man he is. I would like to depict man on a higher level than animals. I want them all to come together. It's pretty nearly impossible but that's what I'm trying to do.
—Benny Andrews, 1968 (Fraustino, Lisa Rowe. The Hickory Chair. Illustrated by Benny Andrews. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2001)
Benny Andrews was an American painter, educator, and activist. He was born in Plainview, GA, in 1930. Andrews earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958 and, soon after, moved to New York City.
An...