Description
Our City is a field of barely controlled skeins of color that swirl around a large central head. Above, a face resembling a traditional African mask summons thoughts of Gentry’s ancestors. Below is a perched bird, a form that appears often in Gentry’s art as a metaphor for the unconscious. Gentry said he painted “people I’ve met throughout most of the world – American, African American…who are my friends.” Our City has the feel of both a memory painting and an ancestral tree. It evokes people he knew and the ancestors whose lives and cultures are an inextricable part of his identity.African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, 2012
Image
Acrylic On Canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist
