Flag Day

Benny AndrewsWW-1966-015032

1966·Oil on canvas·53.3 × 40.6 cm (21 × 16 in.)

Benny Andrews attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1954 to 1958 on the G.I. Bill. Upon graduating, he moved to New York, where he began agitating for black artists to be represented at major museums in the city. A cofounder of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) in 1969, Andrews was increasingly categorized as a “protest artist.” Flag Day can be read as a harbinger of two later projects—a program Andrews organized through the BECC to teach art to inmates in New York City prisons, and a large body of work from the early 1970s he made to mark America’s bicentennial. This intimately scaled, potent painting shows a black man imprisoned by the “bars” of the American flag.

Catalogue

Year: 1966
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 53.3 × 40.6 cm (21 × 16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Benny Andrews

Artist

Benny Andrews

Painting

Benny Andrews was an American painter and printmaker known for figurative work addressing social injustice and the African American experience. Working primarily in oil, acrylic, and collage throughout the postwar period, Andrews developed a gestural style that combined expressionist mark-making with direct representation of working-class subjects and protest imagery. He was active in civil rights advocacy and maintained a studio practice spanning nearly five decades until his death in 2006.

New York City

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