Kerry James Marshal

Kerry James Marshall is one of the leading contemporary painters of his generation. Over the past twenty-five years, he has become internationally known for monumental images of African American history and culture. Marshall attributes his interest in these subjects to the geography of his upbringing. Born in Birmingham, Alabama just as the bus boycotts were beginning, the artist and his family moved to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, in 1963 (two years before the race riots) and finally settled in South Central Los Angeles at the height of the civil rights movement. The experience of growing up at the epicenter of socio-political change has yielded a body of work deeply rooted in personal biography and historical detail. LINK American art