BENNY ANDREWS - the Paul R Jones collection of African American art

Benny Andrews was born in Madison, Georgia in 1930. He is a painter, writer, printmaker, sculptor, book illustrator and teacher.

Andrews grew up in the rural south, one of ten children in a sharecropper's family. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and from 1968 to 1997 taught at Queens College, New York. Andrews served as Director of the Visual Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982 to 1984, and is currently on the Board of the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

Exhibited nationally and internationally for over forty years, Andrews' work can be found in the permanent collections of numerous museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Hirshhorn Museum and The Art Institute of Chicago.

"…collage caused me to look for those symbols that I'd wanted to identify and merge into my work: burlap, ropes, chains, gunny sacks, and other haunting textures and materials that stayed in my conscience though I'd left the environment where they predominated. I also wanted to develop my work beyond my previous limitations, country, race, poverty and illustrations. At the same time, I didn't want to deny anything about myself or my past."
	- Benny Andrews

			DIANNE 1984 mixed media on paper 22"w x 30"h
		CLICK HERE for study image (opens in new window)
				LINKS Benny Andrews on ARTNET: More works and a biography http://www.artnet.com Profile of the Artist From an exhibition at The Southside Gallery, Oxford, Mississippi http://www.southsideoxford.com/painters/andrews/