Samella Lewis

Art Brokerage: Samella Lewis American Artist: b. 1924-2022. Samella Lewis is a visual artist and pioneer in the field of art history. Among her many accomplishments are the creation of numerous gallery spaces and later a museum for African American artists, the publication of a series of scholarly books and journals on black art, and the production of a substantial body of artwork that has garnered international acclaim. Lewis grew up in New Orleans in the 1920s and turned to art as a way to cope with life's harsh realities and with her own unique nature. As a young artist, she was drawn to subjects as diverse as police brutality against African Americans, comic books, and charac­ters from her older sister's romance novels. As an artist, Lewis is best known for her figurative works on paper, including many series of lithographs and screen prints that are pictorial manifestations of the age of civil rights and black liberation. A raised Black Power fist is the focal point of her 1968 linocut Field. Lewis's boldly incised markings circum­scribe a ponderously sculptural field worker who gestures in agony and rebellion under the burning heat of the sun. The matte blackness of the sky is adroitly offset by sweeping lines of varying thickness, bearing witness to the artist's dexterity with the medium. Lewis also produced paintings and sculptures throughout her career. Listings wanted.