“Precious Treasures: Cultivate Them” by WadsworthJarrell

21 3/4 x 24 1/4 inches, offset lithograph on paper, limited edition of 100 (1994) –unframed

Wadsworth Jarrell b. 1929 in Albany, Georgia was born the youngest of six children and credits his father, a furniture maker, and the rest of his family for supporting his childhood interest in art. After high school, Jarrell enlisted in the army, served in Korea and moved to Chicago. In 1954, Jarrell enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Graduating in 1958, Jarrell spent several years working as a commercial artist. By the early 1960s, Jarrell was exhibiting his work widely throughout the Midwest. Jarrell joined the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a group that created Chicago’s Wall of Respect mural, a seminal piece in the 1960s urban mural movement. It was there that he met his future wife, Elaine Annette Johnson, a clothing designer. With the eventual breakup of the Artists’ Workshop of OBAC, Jarrell and fellow artists Jeff Donaldson and Barbara Jones-Hogu formed a collective called COBRA-Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists, which later became AFRI-COBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists. AFRI-COBRA took as its central tenets black pride, social responsibility and the development of a new diasporic African identity. In 1971, Jarrell was recruited by Donaldson to teach at Howard University, where he pursued his MFA and continues there until 1977, when he took a position at the University of Georgia as assistant professor. He retired in 1988. Jarrell’s work has been exhibited widely including: the Smithsonian International Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and at festivals and exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, Sweden, France, Haiti and Martinique.

WadsworthJarrellco-founded the AfriCOBRA movement in the 1960s:http://africobra.com/Introduction.html

Early Trane is similar in style to some of the paintings featured here:http://www.inter-visions.com/WJarrell.asp

As well as in the Georgia Museum of Art:http://www.accessatlanta.com/news/entertainment/calendar/georgia-museum-receives-major-collection/nQzB9/

The title Early Trane is a reference to Jazz musician John Coltrane.

A biography ofWadsworthJarrellwas written calledWadsworthJarrell: The Artist as Revolutionary

A documentary aboutJarrelland his colleagues’ work was produced in 2010, calledAfriCOBRA: Art for the People– 2010:http://www.trustcollective.com/portfolio/content/nola_africobra11.php

More info on Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadsworth_Jarrell