I create from the rhythmic color-rappin-life-style of Black folk. I believe that art can breathe life, and life is what we are about. −Nelson Stevens
Nelson Stevens (American, 1938-2022), an artist and educator, is renowned for creating powerful, rhythmic compositions that celebrate Black life and reveal his technical mastery of the figure. His works can be found in private collections and public museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
This remarkable exhibition, spanning more than 50 years of the artist’s career, explores the political, cultural, and socioeconomic messages in Stevens’s art and style of painting. An early member of AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), and a professor at Northern Illinois University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Stevens spent decades alongside leading intellectuals of the Black Arts and Black Power movements. His experiences contributed to a legacy of vivid works that amplify African American culture and achievements.
From 1972 through 2003, while teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Stevens lived in Springfield. In the early 1970s, he initiated a groundbreaking public art project that resulted in the creation of over 30 murals throughout the city. Like Stevens’s colorful paintings, the murals promoted Black empowerment and brought the pride and activism associated with the Black Arts Movement to western Massachusetts. Fifty years later, his message, artwork, and influence continue to be celebrated locally and nationally.
Kiara Hill, a professor of African American art history in the School of Art + Design at Portland State University, served as Curatorial and Interpretation Advisor for this important exhibition. She earned her B.A. at Sacramento State University, her M.A. at the University of Alabama, and recently completed her Ph.D. in Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. Her research interests include the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s with an emphasis on Black women visual artists, Black Feminist Art, and Black Contemporary Art. Hill is also a curator of Black visual art and culture.
This exhibition was organized by the University of Maryland Global Campus, where it was on view from September 25, 2022 – January 8, 2023.
Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and a grant from the Springfield Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Sponsored by MGM Springfield, Mara Sfara Fine Arts, and Lyn and Bob Silverstein
Image: Primal Force, 2019, serigraph by Nelson Stevens (American, 1938- 2022). Museum purchase.