G.Caliman Coxe (1907-1999)

G. Caliman Coxe in his studio at his home in west Louisville, **The Courier-Journal**, Feb 02, 1986.

Known for his experimental abstract art, Gloucester Caliman Coxe was considered the “dean of Louisville’s African American artists”, a community which included such future luminaries as Bob Thompson, Greg Ridley, Sam Gilliam, and Kenneth Young. He and his three brothers were taught the fundamentals of drawing and composition by their father, a Presbyterian minister and school principal.

Coxe made a living as an illustrator, worked for local theaters, and created training aids at the Fort Knox Army Base before entering the University of Louisville, in his 40’s, to study art. He was the first African American to receive the Allen R. Hite scholarship and the first black fine arts graduate of the university.

“G. Caliman Coxe is the epitome of the craftsman and technician who has fought many battles to achieve the right mixture of paint, the right balance and composition and the right texture and surface quality. When you talk of the struggles of Black artists, you talk about G. Caliman.”

— Sculptor, Ed Hamilton

Coxe established the Louisville Art Workshop in 1969, where artists of all races could create and show their work. The catalog for Black Artists/South, mentions that, “Coxe periodically burned a number of his paintings because of a lack of space to exhibit them, outside his sign shop and church basements.”

His work has been featured in exhibitions, including Paintings by G.C. COXE: 4 phases, Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1972; Beyond 1984: Contemporary Perspectives on American Art: an exhibition of Afro-American Artists, Trisolini Gallery of Ohio University, 1985; Black Artists / South, Huntsville Museum of Art, AL, 1979; Black Art Today in the South, Memphis State University, The University Gallery, 1982; and the National Exhibition of Black Artists, Smith Mason Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1971. In 1991, G. Caliman Coxe Retrospective, an overview of 40 years of his career, was held at the Louisville Urban League, KY, and in 1995, Gloucester Caliman Coxe A Retrospective: Rags and Wires, Sticks and Pantyhose Too, was held at the University of Louisville. This exhibition featured 72 abstract paintings and constructions. Most recently, in 2013, his a selection of his work was shown at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.

REF: Hudson, Ralph M. Black Artists/South. Huntsville Museum of Art, 1979.

Lansdell, Sarah. “Coxe Show Flashes Dazzle at Workshop.” The Courier-Journal & Times, 5 May 1968, p. G14.

“His work reflects his seeing what he calls ‘the transparency of things’ - of penetrating the overlapping edges and thicknesses of form to see ‘a conglomeration of things all at once’ as the Cubists did.”

— Sarah Lansdell, Courier-Journal Art Critic

Lot 204 Exodus #16

1980
oil on canvas
58-1/4 x 42-1/2 inches
signed; exhibition tag with title and date on original painted frame
The artist painted a solid green margin (including frame) in at least several works from the Exodus series, including this example.
In 1980, Spalding College, Louisville, KY, held an exhibition of Coxe’s ***Exodus*** Series, which was described by Sarah Lansdell as “full of brilliant pointillist color that is controlled by geometry in some works and…eerie, figurative imagery in others.”
Lansdell, Sarah, *New G.C. Coxe Series*, **The Courier-Journal**, 21 Dec 1980, p. H18.

Kenneth Victor Young (1933-2017)

Kenneth Young was born in Louisville, KY in 1933. He initially studied physics at the University of Louisville, KY but graduated with a degree in fine arts in 1962. While in Louisville, he joined Gallery Enterprise, a black artist’s group that counted Bob Thompson and Sam Gilliam among its members.

Young moved to Washington DC in 1964 and took a job at the Smithsonian Institution, where he served as an exhibition designer. He also worked for the United States Information Agency as a design specialist, making frequent trips to Egypt and other African nations to consult with curators on their exhibition design. While pursuing his career, Young continued to paint and became acquainted with the Washington Color School artists. He received his first one man show at Franz Bader Gallery in 1968. Other important solo exhibitions were held at Fisk University in 1973 and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC, in 1974.

In the catalog essay for the exhibition, The Language of Abstraction, Ed Clark, Richard W. Franklin, and Kenneth Young (2018), Dr. Jennifer Cohen writes,

During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Young pushed the formal boundaries of color painting while invoking a wide range of sources and allusions. His works referred to beauty found in nature, the history of art, and the politics of the civil rights era. He used diluted acrylic pigments on raw canvas to explore, as he put it, beginnings and endings, probing the boundaries between vibrant colors with complex bleeds and blurs. Working on the floor or a table, Young would introduce pigments to a selectively dampened canvas with a brush. Then, with a sponge and spray bottle at hand, he would control the bleeds by alternately dampening and drying areas of the composition.

Young’s painting, Red Dance (1970) is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. The painting first gained attention when it was featured in Black Art in America, a 1970 article written by Barbara Rose for the publication, Art in America.

His work has been included in numerous exhibitions including: Washington: 20 Years, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, 1970; Black American Artists/ 71, Illinois Arts Council, 1971; Art in Washington and Its Afro-American Presence 1940-1970, Washington Project for the Arts, 1985; African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, 2012; and most recently, Kenneth Victor Young: Continuum, held at American University museum in 2019.