Wadsworth Jarrell
Exhibitions
Wadsworth Jarrell, Chicago Fine Arts Center, 1966.
THE TIME IS NOW! Art Worlds of CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE 1960-1980, The Smart Museum of Art, 2018.
Literature
“In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr.’s protest march inspired me to make Sign of the Times, my first painting to include social commentary. In the center of the painting, is a portrait of Dr. King, with civil rights marchers on one side carrying signs decrying unjust conditions for African Americans. The other side shows white youths living a life of leisure and indifference. Their indulgence includes partying while attempting to learn steps in the latest African American-created dances: the twist, the watusi, the monkey, the bird, the shake, and the boogaloo. I wholeheartedly agree with the poet, scholar and publisher Haki Madhubuti “I was glad to leave the fifties but did not realize how the sixties would change me, my people and America.”
- Wadsworth Jarrell from AFRICOBRA; Experimental Art toward a School of Thought 2020, page 33
Publications
Robert L. Douglas, Wadsworth Jarrell: The Artist as Revolutionary, Pomegranate Artbooks, Rohnert Park, California, 1996.
Wadsworth Jarrell, AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art toward a School of Thought, Duke University Press, 2020.