Benny Andrews, 1930-2006

Art in America, Jan, 2007 by Stephanie Cash

Benny Andrews, 75, painter of Southern life and American scenes, died Nov. 10 in Brooklyn of cancer, three days before his 76th birthday. Born in Plainview, Ga., to a family of sharecroppers, he was of African-American, Scotch-Irish and Cherokee heritage, and this diversity impacted his paintings and social activism. His father was a self-taught artist, and, despite a hardscrabble existence, his mother stressed education for their 10 children. Though he was able to attend school only when he wasn't working in the cotton fields, Andrews became the first high school graduate in his family. After serving in the U.S. Air Force from 1950 to '53, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, earning his bachelor's degree. In 1958 he moved to New York and became friends with such artists as Red Grooms, Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson and Raphael Soyer. His first solo show was in 1962 at Forum Gallery.

A vivid storyteller, Andrews frequently created works in series, including two from 2005 on Langston Hughes and the Trail of Tears. His oil or gouache works are characterized by their often elongated figures, spare compositions and use of collage. Andrews's style can be attributed partially to his copying of illustrations from newspapers, magazines and comic books with his brother Raymond, who became a novelist. Andrews illustrated Raymond's first book, Appalachee Red (1978), and all his subsequent novels, as well as children's books and adult works by other authors.

Andrews received a John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1965 and used it to return to Georgia, which inspired his "Autobiographical Series." He established an art program in the New York prison system in 1968 and, in 1969, co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, which sought to raise awareness of minority and women artists and to increase their presence in major collections and exhibitions. In 2002, with his second wife, the artist Nene Humphrey, he established the Benny Andrews Foundation, which supports minority artists and art teachers, as well as African-American galleries and cultural institutions. The foundation is closely affiliated with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (at the University of New Orleans), where Andrews was a founding board member. The museum has a gallery devoted to the Andrews family that displays the work of the artist, Humphrey, and Andrews's father. A memorial exhibition of Andrews's work is on view there through Apr. 19.

Andrews received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974 and served as the agency's director of the visual art program from 1982 to '84. He taught at Queens College of the City University of New York from 1968 to '97. He frequently showed with ACA Galleries in New York, most recently in June 2006.