Archibald Motley

de Richard Powell

Featuring more than 140 colour illustrations, this catalogue accompanies the first full-scale survey in 20 years of the work of Archibald John Motley, Jr. (1891-1981), a master colourist and radical interpreter of urban culture. Motley's brilliant yet idiosyncratic paintings - simultaneously expressionist and social realist - have captured worldwide attention with their rainbow-hued, syncopated compositions. The catalogue includes the artist's depictions of African American life in early-twentieth-century Chicago, as well as his portraits and archetypes, portrayals of African American life in Jazz Age Paris, and renderings of 1950s Mexico.