Suzanne Jackson

Untitled nude

1960s

Ink, collage on paper

15 x 18 inches

signed at bottom

tears along top left edge and bottom right corner as pictured; stains

Provenance: private collection, San Francisco

Domestic shipping $35

Suzanne Jackson (born 1944 Missouri, raised Alaska), is an artist, poet, set designer, gallery owner, and dancer who was influential to the development of the African American art scene in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1968 to 1970 Jackson ran Gallery 32, a Los Angeles art space dedicated to fostering a supportive artist community. The gallery was inspired by the philosophy of her mentor Charles White that art could be an effective vehicle for community activism and social change. Gallery 32 functioned less as a business than as a place for the exchange of ideas and philosophies. Jackson funded the gallery herself, largely with money she earned from dancing and teaching. The gallery was one of the few art spaces in Los Angeles to exhibit emerging African American artists such as Gloria Bohanon, Emory Douglas, David Hammons, Betye Saar, and Timothy Washington. It also hosted fund-raising exhibitions for the Black Arts Council, the Black Panther Party, and the Watts Towers Arts Center children's arts program. One of the gallery's important exhibitions was the 1970 Sapphire Show, the first Los Angeles survey of African American women artists. Gallery 32 played a vital role in the progressive struggles of the period while contributing to the diverse art scene of Los Angeles until it closed in 1970.

After the gallery, Jackson continued to make and exhibit her own work. She had solo exhibitions at the Ankrum Gallery in the 1970s. Using acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media, she worked to reflect the "abstract language of cultural continuity, social dislocation, spiri­tual yearning and the grace of the physical body. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. In 1981 she was nominated by Betye Saar for the first National Awards in the Visual Arts. She was the recipient of two Idyllwild Associates fellowships for etching/bookmaking and dance at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, in 1982 and 1983, respectively. She taught in the painting department at Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia, from 1996-2012.

Selected Exhibitions

Black Untitled II: Dimensions of the Figure, Oakland Museum of California, 1971. Solo exhibitions, Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, 1974, 1978. Black Mirror, Womanspace, Los Angeles, 1973. Directions in Afro-American Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1974. Suzanne Jackson/William Pajaud/Charles White, Haggin Art Galleries, Pioneer Museum, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, 1975. Lighter than Usual, Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, Virginia, 2010.