Hartwell Yeargans
1915-2005
Guitar Player (untitled)
c. 1960-1970
color woodblock print on paper
8 x 6-1/2 inches
initialed with A/P

Provenance: The Bill Savage Collection, Pittsburgh

Born in Kansas City in 1915, Yeargans studied sign painting at Lincoln High School. He was encouraged to move to New York in 1936 by his brother, James Conroy Yeargans. James was working for the WPA on murals at Harlem Hospital. Hartwell landed a job in the defense industry drafting ship designs during WWII. When the war ended, he enrolled at the Art Students League and studied painting with Louis Kantor. He focused on printmaking in the 1960s, studying with Tom Yamamoto at Goddard College (Vermont; he earned a BA in Fine Art and Education). He later became an instructor of printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, 1969-71. He was included in some important exhibitions of African American Art at the Philadelphia Civic Center (1969) and the Whitney Museum (1971). He began to concentrate on color woodblock prints such as this one, and had a one-person exhibit (Exhibition of Graphics by Hartwell Yeargans, Montreal, 1967). He also exhibited at Black Power in the Arts in Flint, Michigan in 1970.

generally good condition; unframed.