Description
Mahogany Hall, 1989
Artist: Joe Overstreet
Color Lithograph, 33 3/4 x 27 3/4 inches
Numbered lower left, titled lower center, and signed/dated lower right in pencil by the Artist
Joe Overstreet belonged to a generation of contemporary African-American visual artist who was born in Conehatta, Mississippi in 1933. Overstreet is well-known for his abstract paintings that overlapped into sculptural dimensions. He referenced ancient and modern Islamic design, African patterning and South Asian mandalas. Later in his career he created a home in New York for artists who had been ignored by the mainstream. Overstreet has been published in “Now Dig This! : Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980” at the Hammer Museum in LA in 2011 which travelled to the MoMA, and was displayed in the traveling exhibition of “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power”.
“For me,” Overstreet said in a 2004 interview with The New York Times, “painting is not intellectual, it’s emotional; I have to feel empathetic, akin to situations. I paint things that I think about and feel.”
