Claude Lawrence

Last updated
Claude Lawrence
Born1944
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Artist
  • Musician
Instrument Tenor saxophone
Years active1960s–present

Claude Lawrence (born 1944) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist and self-taught abstract artist. Beginning in the 1960s he had a successful career as a jazz musician before switching his focus to painting full-time in 1986. His art is held in the permanent collections of over 40 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Parrish Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [1] [2]

Contents

Lawrence’s art has been described as expressing the rhythms and improvisation of jazz. His compositions, which frequently use bold colors and dynamic brushstrokes, are abstract while often approaching the figurative. [1] [3] Lawrence has stated, "I build a dialogue with each painting. It speaks to me, it tells me where it wants to go, and when it gets there, it’s born. It’s done." [4]

Early life

Born in 1944, [1] Claude Lawrence grew up on the South Side of Chicago. [4] His father was a construction worker originally from the Mississippi Delta. [5] Lawrence began playing tenor saxophone at age 14. He attended a vocational high school for commercial art and instrumental music, where he was classmates with fellow musicians Frederick J. Brown, Anthony Braxton and Jack DeJohnette. [6]

Career

Jazz

After graduating high school, Lawrence formed The Claude Lawrence Trio and began playing jazz in Chicago clubs. He would also play in groups with members from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. To make ends meet, he worked a number of jobs, including as a bus driver, taxi driver, construction worker and mail carrier. [5]

Lawrence first visited New York City in 1964, drawn to the music scene there. Over the next few years he split his time between Chicago and New York playing jazz in both cities before settling in New York for an extended period of time beginning in 1968. [6] Lawrence has described moving amongst hippy crowds in both cities, often staying with other artists and musicians. Some of the New-York-based artists he was associated with over the years include Fred Brown, Lorenzo Pace, Jack Whitten, Joe Overstreet and Robert Blackburn. [7] Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Lawrence continued playing jazz in New York and throughout the country. He also recorded an album with the Last Poets. [6] During this time, he also worked a number of odd jobs including painting houses, cleaning chandeliers, teaching Tai Chi and groundskeeping for the University of Connecticut. [5]

Painting

In 1986, Lawrence began focusing on painting full-time after a psychic friend told him it was time for a change. [8] Over the next three decades, he spent long stretches of time living and working in Sag Harbor, New York, a seaside community on Long Island with a history as a Black cultural enclave. [1] He also lived at times in New York City, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Mexico City and France. [6]

In 2013, art collectors Lyn and E.T. Williams Jr. bought a large collection of Claude Lawrence’s paintings and began donating them to museums. His art is now part of the permanent collections of more than 40 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Parrish Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [1] [2] His paintings also adorn the US embassy in Paris. [9]

Lawrence’s first solo exhibition was held at the Gerald Peters Gallery in New York in March 2015. [10] In 2016 Lawrence’s work was featured in “Modern Heroics: 75 Years of African-American Expressionism” at the Newark Museum. [1] Lawrence's 2019 solo exhibition, "A World of His Own Making," was held at the Julie Keyes Gallery, and in 2023, Lawrence's "Free Jazz" solo exhibition was held at the David Lewis Gallery. [11] [12] Other art galleries that have exhibited his work include Anthony Meier in San Francisco, the LAB in Seattle, the Keyes Gallery in Sag Harbor and Aaron Payne Fine Art in Santa Fe. [3] [4]

In 2024, Lawrence’s Reflections on Porgy and Bess exhibited at Venus Over Manhattan gallery. The show featured 22 abstract paintings inspired by George Gershwin’s revered opera Porgy and Bess . [4] The paintings follow the narrative sweep of Gershon’s epic work of Black love and tragedy. Lawrence painted the works intuitively with music playing, often improvising and letting forms and colors lead the way to the final image. [8]

Personal life

Lawrence is longtime partners with artist Leslee Howes Stradford. Stradford, also originally from Chicago, is a figurative and abstract painter as well as a digital collagist. [12] Together they have held residencies at institutions such as Chateau Orquevaux in France and The Church in Sag Harbor. [6]

Collections

Lawrence's artwork can be found in the permanent collections of the following museums and institutions: [1] [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Lawrence</span> American painter (1917–2000)

Jacob Armstead Lawrence was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism," an art form popularized in Europe which drew great inspiration from West African and Meso-American art. For his compositions, Lawrence found inspiration in everyday life in Harlem. He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught and spent 16 years as a professor at the University of Washington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romare Bearden</span> American artist, author, and songwriter (1911–1988)

Romare Bearden was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.

The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. They often drew inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy DeCarava</span> American photographer (1919–2009)

Roy Rudolph DeCarava was an American artist. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the "social documentary" style of many predecessors.

Donald K. Sultan is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, particularly well known for large-scale still life paintings and the use of industrial materials such as tar, enamel, spackle and vinyl tiles. He has been exhibiting internationally in prominent museums and galleries, and his works are included in important museum collections all over the globe. Sultan is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his artistic achievements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronnie Landfield</span> American painter

Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Lewis (artist)</span> American painter, scholar, and teacher.

Norman Wilfred Lewis was an American painter, scholar, and teacher. Lewis, who was African-American and of Bermudian descent, was associated with abstract expressionism, and used representational strategies to focus on black urban life and his community's struggles.

Williams is the first African American artist to be featured in The Janson History Of Art.

Thomas Sills was a painter and collagist and a participant in the New York Abstract Expressionist movement. At the peak of his career in the 1960s and 1970s, his work was widely shown in museums. His work was regularly featured in art journals and is in museum collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Gentry</span> American painter

Herbert Alexander Gentry was an African-American Expressionist painter who lived and worked in Paris, France, Copenhagen, Denmark (1958–63), in the Swedish cities of Gothenburg (1963–65), Stockholm, and Malmö (1980–2001), and in New York City (1970–2000) as a permanent resident of the Hotel Chelsea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alvin D. Loving</span> African-American abstract expressionist painter (1935 - 2005)

Alvin D. Loving Jr., better known as Al Loving, was an African-American abstract expressionist painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, dyed fabric paintings, and large paper collages, all exploring complicated color relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Brook</span> American painter

Alexander Brook was an American artist, teacher, and art critic, known for his paintings. He was active from 1910 until 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick J. Brown</span> American painter (1945–2012)

Frederick J. Brown was a New York City based visual artist originally from Chicago. His style ranges from abstract expressionism to figurative. His art work was influenced by historical, religious, narrative and urban themes. He is noted for his extensive portrait series of jazz and blues musicians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan C. Rizzie</span> American painter

Dan C. Rizzie, American artist and musician, was born in Poughkeepsie, NY on May 23, 1951 and grew up in India, Egypt, Jordan and Jamaica. Rizzie lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

Sam Middleton was a mixed-media artist from New York City. He travelled all over the world with the US Merchant Marine, lived in Mexico and Sweden and eventually settled down in the Netherlands where he "was part of the considerable contingency of expatriate African American artists". Settling in Holland in 1961, he established himself as one of The Netherlands' premier artists. His work is part of the Whitney Museum permanent collection, which included him in its 1962 exhibition 40 Artists Under 40 and was included in the 2015 inaugural exhibition for the museum's new building on the High Line.

<i>Composition for "Jazz"</i> Painting by Albert Gleizes

Composition for "Jazz", or Composition , is a 1915 painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. This Cubist work was reproduced in a photograph of Gleizes working on the painting in the Xeic York Herald, then published in The Literary Digest, 27 November 1915 (p. 1225). Composition for "Jazz" was purchased in 1938 by Solomon R. Guggenheim from Feragil Gallery, New York and forms part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection. The painting is in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Vincent DaCosta Smith was an American artist, painter, printmaker and teacher. He was known for his depictions of black life.

Ronald Joseph (1910–1992) was an African-American artist, teacher, and printmaker.

Frank Wimberley is an African American abstract expressionist artist.

David Buchanan Parrish (1939–2021) was an American artist who was a part of the photorealism movement.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Segal, Mark (8 June 2017). "A Collector Who Gave an Artist a Legacy". The East Hampton Star.
  2. 1 2 3 Strugatch, Warren (22 November 2018). "Filling Their Lives With Art, and Not Just One Piece at a Time". The New York Times.
  3. 1 2 "A Jazz-Musician-Turned-Painter's Graphic, Musical Compositions". Artsy . November 6, 2014. Retrieved July 22, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Gómez-Upegui, Salomé (18 March 2024). "In New York, an Artist's Lifelong Love for Jazz Comes Into Focus". W (magazine).
  5. 1 2 3 Negroponte, George (21 June 2021). "An Oral History with Claude Lawrence". Bomb .
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Negroponte, George (17 May 2021). "To Project with Intention: Claude Lawrence Interviewed". Bomb .
  7. ↑ "Claude Lawrence". Artsy . Retrieved 22 July 2024.
  8. 1 2 White, Katie (7 April 2024). "Jazz Saxophonist Claude Lawrence Debuts New 'Porgy and Bess'-Inspired Paintings". Artnet.
  9. ↑ "Paris Publication 2023". Art in Embassies. 2023.
  10. ↑ "Claude Lawrence: Beyond Improvisation". Gerald Peters Gallery. February 19, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2024.
  11. ↑ "'A World of His Own Making' - Claude Lawrence Solo Exhibition". Keyes Art. 2019. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  12. 1 2 Escalante-De Mattei, Shanti (June 30, 2023). "Artists Claude Lawrence and Leslee Stradford Take the Hamptons". ARTnews. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  13. ↑ Exodus: Claude Lawrence
  14. ↑ Marvels of My Own Inventiveness
  15. ↑ reet and marry: Claude Lawrence
  16. ↑ Intermission:Art and Music from the Permanent Collection
  17. ↑ NOMA Acquires 10 Works from Souls Grown Deep Foundation
  18. ↑ Claude Lawrence
  19. ↑ Claude Lawrence
  20. ↑ Two Paintings by Artist Claude Lawrence Given to Westover
  21. ↑ Works of: Claude Lawrence
  22. ↑ Claude Lawrence: Euphoria
  23. ↑ Claude Lawrence: Friendly Henry
  24. ↑ Creative Haven: Black Artists of Sag Harbor
  25. ↑ Claude Lawrence: Window
  26. ↑ Claude Lawrence
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.