#africobra

Napoleon Jones-Henderson, a member of the AfriCOBRA collective who made art for the age of Black Power, died in Boston on December 6 at 82. Wonderland, a Boston-based art publication, reported that Jones-Henderson had been battling cancer. Jones-Henderson was one of the key artists associated with AfriCOBRA, a Chicago-based group whose members synthesized African styles with emergent Black forms…

#bornOnThisDay Barbara Jones-Hogu (1938-2017) was an African-American artist best known for her work with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and for co-founding the artists' collective AfriCOBRA. Via Wikipedia #PalianSHOW

Barbara Jones-Hogu April 17, 1938 – November 14, 2017was an African-American artist best known for her work with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and for co-founding the artists’ collective AfriCOBRA. Via Wikipedia (photo) Jones-Hogu worked in a variety of printing techniques, including woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and screen prints. Her work dealt directly with social and…

Wadsworth A. Jarrell’s Revolutionary (Angela Davis), 1971, spotted at Brooklyn Museum in 2020, is based off of a photograph of the activist.  The colorful painting includes words from her speeches and actual bullet cartridges.

From the museum about the work-

Wadsworth Jarrell’s Revolutionary (Angela Davis) is one of the most recognized paintings associated with the Black Arts Movement, a cultural manifestation of the Black Power Movement. Artists of this movement sought to create uplifting images that called upon Black people to harness their collective power. The power of communal action is here expressed through a chromatic swirl of individual colors that coalesce into a unified image of the radical activist and intellectual Angela Davis. Davis’s militant clothing—complete with bullet cartridges—was modeled after the Revolutionary Suit designed by artist Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth’s wife. An icon of Black Power, Davis continues to lead the prison abolition movement today.

Jarrell, along with his wife, is part of the African American artist collective AFRICOBRA, formed in Chicago in 1968.

Below is part of a statement about the group from their website by another of the founders, Gerald Williams.

AFRICOBRA began very loosely in 1968 as an association of visual artists. We decided to commit our selves to the collective exploration, development, and perpetuation of an approach to image making which would reflect and project the moods, attitudes, and sensibilities of African Americans independent of the technical and aesthetic strictures of Euro-centric modalities.  Jeff Donaldson, who spearheaded the movement,Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, and myself, Gerald Williams opened the lid on what we called AFRICOBRA – African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists.  It was an original name that came to identify our place within the broader context of Black art.