WattsOS
OG
Our Grandmothers
1992 · Illustrated book with six lithographs
Overall: 22 1/4 x 17 1/2" (56.5 x 44.5 cm); page: 21 7/8 x 17 5/16" (55.5 x 44 cm)
Museum of Modern Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
John Biggers
American, 1924
PaintingStreet ArtFiguration
Representation
None documented
0
Institutional Exhibitions
5
Works in Collection
9
Assets Indexed
3
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
70%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
- • Street Art
- • Figuration
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
About
Why this artist matters now
John Biggers was an American painter and muralist whose large-scale works documented African American life and history with formal dignity and social conviction. Working primarily in tempera and fresco, he created monumental public commissions that centered Black communities, labor, and cultural resilience in the postwar period. His murals and easel paintings combined modernist composition with narrative specificity, refusing the abstraction that dominated his contemporaries in favor of figuration rooted in lived experience.
Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 26d ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Street Art
Medium
Painting
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (5)
Record
Images
Related artists
Adjacent in the graph
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Shared movement
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Shared movement
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Shared movement
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Richard Artschwager
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Record
Movements and affiliations
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
Record
Exhibitions and timeline
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