Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist born in Birmingham, Alabama. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles and now lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he previously taught at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a 1978 graduate of Otis College of Art and Design.

Although he currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois, his time spent in Watts, Los Angeles, California, where the Black Power and Civil Rights movements had a significant impact on his paintings. Strongly influenced by his experiences as a young man, he developed a signature style during his early years as an artist that involved the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures. These images represent his perspective of African Americans with separate and distinct inner and outer appearances. At the same time, they confront racial stereotypes within contemporary American society. This common theme appeared continuously in his work throughout the subsequent decades, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.

While earning his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, he worked not have a representational image or a specific story to tell,” over abstraction Thus, Marshall still retains the political content so important to the Civil Rights Movement while painting a narrative through mural-sized pieces.

Marshall is known for large-scale paintings, sculptures, and other objects that take African-American life and history as their subject matter. His work often deals with the effects of the Civil Rights movement on domestic life, in addition to working with elements of popular culture. In a 1998 interview with Bomb Magazine, Marshall observed,

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