(American/Georgia, 1945-2021)

Couple Dancing, inscribed bottom right "Winfred Rembert", dye on carved and tooled leather, 33-1/4 x 18-3/4 in.; metal frame 33-3/4 x 19-1/2 in.

Note: Inscribed by artist verso:

"To My Good Buddy Richard from Bridgeport Ct. A great Dancer whose nick-name was Egg inspired me to do this picture. When I was a little boy I watched Egg and tried to copy his style. Winfred Rembert 4-23-11"

Born in rural Georgia, raised in a community tied to the cotton fields, Winfred Rembert survived a childhood of poverty in the segregated South of the 1940s. He would go on to be a nationally recognized artist, and his biography - Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist?s Memoir of the Jim Crow South - was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022.

It was not a well paved path. In 1966, after a demonstration in Americus, Georgia, Rembert was arrested and put in jail without being charged. A year later, he escaped but was caught and hung up by a group of deputy sheriffs. They stuck him with a knife but did not kill and burn him as he had anticipated. He spent the next seven years in a chain gang. Remarkably, he met his wife while building roads and bridges in rural Georgia as part of his prison sentence. While in prison, a man named TJ taught him how to carve wallets out of leather, a skill that he would use decades later in his embossed leather paintings.

After his release, Rembert and Patsy married and they moved to New York, then Connecticut, where he worked a variety of jobs. Not until in his 50s after a second round in prison, did he begin to draw and paint the scenes of his youth, carving the stories into tactile leather canvases.

In 2000, Rembert had a well publicized show at the Yale University Art Gallery. In 2002, he was introduced to Peter Tillou after speaking about his artwork at a school in Waterbury, Connecticut. A short time later they agreed to a working relationship that included numerous exhibitions and his 2010 coming out show at Adelson Galleries in New York. His work has entered major museum and private collections.

Provenance: Private Collection, acquired directly from the artist [[southernart]]

[the_american_south]

scattered scratches and light abrasions; frame with minor scratches