Jack Whitten (December 5, 1939 – January
20, 2018)was an American abstract painter. In 2016, he was awarded a
National Medal of Arts.Whitten was born in 1933 in Bessemer,
Alabama.Planning a career as an army doctor, Whitten entered pre-medical
studies at Tuskegee Institute from 1957 to 1959. He also traveled to
nearby Montgomery, Alabama to hear Martin Luther King, Jr speak during
the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was deeply moved by his vision for a
changed America.In 1960, Whitten went to Southern University in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana to begin studying art and became involved in Civil
Rights demonstrations there. Angered by the violent resistance to change
he experienced he moved to New York City in 1960. He enrolled
immediately at the Cooper Union, graduating with a bachelor's degree in
fine art in 1964.Afterwards he remained in New York as a working artist,
heavily influenced by the abstract expressionists then dominating the
art community.Whitten's work was featured in the Annual Exhibition of
Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in
1972. The Whitney mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings in 1974. He
has also had individual shows at numerous private galleries and
universities, including a 10-year retrospective in 1983 at the Studio
Museum in Harlem and an exhibition of memorial paintings in 2008 at the
Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia.Throughout his
career, Whitten concerned himself with the techniques and materials of
painting and the relationship of artworks to their inspirations. At
times he has pursued quickly-applied gestural techniques akin to
photography or printmaking. At other times the deliberative and
constructive hand is evident. The New York Times labeled him the father
of a "new abstraction".Wikipedia
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