Brunk Auctions
Live Auction

Premier Auction - Session II - February 4, 2023

Sat, Feb 4, 2023 09:00AM EST
Lot 1059

Winfred Rembert

Estimate: $70,000 - $100,000

Bid Increments

Price Bid Increment
$0 $25
$100 $50
$1,000 $100
$2,000 $200
$3,000 $250
$5,000 $500
$10,000 $1,000
$20,000 $2,000
$50,000 $5,000
$100,000 $10,000

(American/Georgia, 1945-2021)

Baptism, circa 2004, inscribed bottom center "Winfred Rembert", dye on carved and tooled leather, 18 x 24 in.; metal frame 18-1/2 x 24-1/2 in.

Note: 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, purchased from Peter Tillou [[southernart]]

[the_american_south]

Condition

surface is very clean, good bright color; frame with light wear