Born in California to parents who relocated from Louisiana as part of the Great Migration, influential painter Robert Colescott’s childhood and early adolescence were concurrent with the Great Depression. After serving in World War II, Colescott returned to the United States and began taking art classes. He eventually studied with artist Fernand Léger in Paris, during which time he moved away from abstraction in favor of representation. Colescott’s iconic style emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s, consisting of vibrant and satirical figurative paintings. During this same period, Colescott explored Black identity, systemic racism, and the pernicious legacy of racial stereotypes through his work. Over the next three decades, cultural critique remained an important theme of his output, while stylistically his work took on a more painterly, dreamlike quality.

–Erica Bogese, from the Glenstone Field Guide