Kerry James Marshall

(b. 1955)

Kerry James Marshall’s paintings are material and conceptual confrontations with the exclusion of Black life from the art historical canon. Born in Birmingham and raised in Los Angeles, Marshall has been based in Chicago since 1987. Marshall’s work spans mediums and scales, ranging from the intimacy of printmaking to the monumentalism of mural painting. His largest work, Rushmore, was commissioned in 2017 for the exterior wall of the Chicago Cultural Center and assembles a pantheon of twenty women who have defined Chicago culture. Marshall’s work became increasingly celebrated in and beyond Chicago during the Obama years. He was appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2013, and was given his first major solo retrospective, Mastry, at the MCA Chicago in 2016, an exhibition which subsequently traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.