Herbert Gentry

Herbert Gentry

Born: July 17, 1919 in Pittsburgh, PA

Died: September 8, 2003 in Stockholm, Sweden

Herbert Gentry painting in Falsterbo, August 1990

Herbert Gentry (1919-2003) was an African American Expressionist painter lived and worked in Paris, France, (1946-1970; 1976-1980), Copenhagen, Denmark (1958-1963), In the Swedish cities of Gothenburg (1963-1965), Stockholm (1965-1976; 2001-2003), and Malmo (1980-2001), and in New York City (1970-2000) as a permanent resident of the Hotel Chelsea.

The Art of Herbert Gentry

The concept of an “ensemble of metaphors” is a helpful one to make meaning of the themes appearing in Herbert Gentry’s work, as they appear and depart through porous boundaries. The perching bird and the stream are metaphors for the unconscious life. Composed of subjective elements, Gentry’s paintings juxtapose faces and masks, shifting orientations of figures and heads - human and animal - into profiles, to the left, to the right, above and below. The direction of the head, as face or profile, leading right or left, or facing front, is played against the relative scale of each head, its position on the canvas, and in relationship to the others. The faces evoke subtle expressions and moods. As enigmatic as a face hovering above the blurred vision of an infant, the viewer makes meaning through associations.

Although autobiographical elements are part of Gentry’s work, they emerge through an organization by natural feeling from his consciousness stream. Rather than a display of narrative depictions, Gentry releases his experiences upon the canvas. The act of spontaneous painting uses consciousness itself, and each painting reveals the self. When asked about direct influences, he avoids imposing external meanings upon primary experience, describing instead his creative process.

Philosophically near to the jazz musician, Gentry breathes rhythms into a personally inflected expressionism. “The stacatto beat of jazz is fused with biomorphic form in paintings which never become totally abstract, but hold the picture plane in the Cubist tradition” wrote art historian Peter Selz (1994) about Gentry’s work. Gentry creates a foil for feelings and for emotion, and orchestrates his subjective figuration in dialogue with the immediacy of the painted gesture. Romare Bearden (1981) wrote that Gentry’s “method is conceptual rather than realistic. One senses in the chromatic emotionalism, and in the biomorphic forms of the figures that often appear in Gentry’s paintings, the strong pull of the unconscious.”

The figures are outlined by color, breathing and gregarious. Often an inherent sweetness emerges with the childlike openness, a moonface - guileless yet never naive. The colors are without nuance- straight from the tube on either primed or unprimed canvas or linen grounds. The rhythms of stroke to stroke emit the discordance and resonance of the colors used to embolden edges and emphatic lines. Each gesture as color is a strand of the web, clear and forceful.

Biography

Harlem Renaissance Childhood

Herbert Alexander Gentry was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 17, 1919. He was the son of James Jentry of Madison Courthouse, VA and Violet Howden of Kingston, Jamaica. By 1924 he was living in Harlem, New York City with his mother and her family.

The Harlem Renaissance provided the backdrop for Gentry’s childhood. His mother worked as a dancer and actress. Under the name Teresa Jentry, she danced in the chorus with Josephine Baker and Bessye Buchanen. Later, she was in the cast of the original rendition of the Zeigfeld musical Show Boat in 1927, as well as its revival in 1932. His mother’s friends included Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Duke Ellington.

As a youngster he had a role in the play Scarlet Sister Mary which toured the country with actress Ethel Barrymore and opened on Broadway in 1931. *[1] Gentry took inspiration from artists, musicians, writers, dancers, and actors, all of whom reinforced his belief in the creative world which lay beyond Harlem.

Educated in the New York City Public Schools, Gentry attended Cooper Junior High and George Washington High School. He pursued drawing in school took art classes at the Harlem YMCA and later studied art as part of the under the Federal Art Project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) at Roosevelt High School.

In 1939, Gentry demonstrated with his friends for better employment opportunities for Black people, in connection with his cousin Arnold P. Johnson, who worked with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. As a result, he became the first white collar worker for Consolidated Edison in New York. At the same time, he studied business at New York University. "If you do well, we'll hire others," he was told by the company directors.

World War II - North Africa and Europe

Herbert Gentry was in the U.S. Army (1942 - 1945) serving in the 90th Coast Guard Artillery / Anti-Aircraft Regiment working in Special Services. His U.S. Army Service in World War II took Gentry to different countries in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe: Morocco, Algeria, Madeline Island, (Italy), Corsica, Marseilles, Paris, Alsace-Lorraine, (France), and Salzburg (Austria). At the end of the war, Gentry was stationed in the Paris suburb of Crepy-en-Vallois. He took every opportunity to visit Paris.

The Expatriate Years

Paris 1946 - 1958

The center of the Art World before World War II Paris still held that title in 1946. Paris touched other memories for ex-soldier Gentry, who as a youth had heard many of his mother's friends speak of their travel and performances in Paris.

Home in Harlem after his discharge from the Army, Gentry did not want to continue working at Consolidated Edison. He wanted to pursue his interest in art and was eager to return to Paris. Not waiting for the administration of the GI Bill to be organized in Paris, and warned that the basic amenities were still rationed, Gentry was there for the Fall 1946 academic term.

In Paris, he lived at the American House at the Cite Universitaire for the first year, where his fellow American students included sculptor Kosta Alex, the pianist Julian Ketcham, and writers Marc Behm, and Dan Kurzman. Moving beyond student circles, he sought out Richard Wright (author), who encouraged him in his art; he got to know James Baldwin (writer).

Gentry studied French at the Alliance Francaise, and was enrolled at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales. L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere had an approach to art teaching that matched Gentry's need for freedom. He spent three years studying with Ossip Zadkine and French painter Yves Brailler. By 1949 Gentry was teaching visiting Americans at L' Academie de la Grand Chaumiere and had his fIrst solo Parisian exhibition at Galerie du Seine.

Gentry lived the cafe life in Montparnasse, meeting his fellow American artists at cafe Dome, Le Select and La Coupole: sculptors Shinkichi Tajiri, Kosta Alex, and Harold Cousins, painters Herbie Katzman, John Hultberg, Burt Hasen, Haywood Bill Rivers, Sam Francis, Avel DeKnight, and painter-filmmaker Carmen D'Avino, while they casually rubbed shoulders with the greats like Giacometti and Georges Braque.

He met Jimmy "Loverman" Davis, Serge Charchoune, George Spaventa, Corneille, Giacometti, Wilfredo Lam, Jean Cocteau.

Between 1948 and 1951, Gentry opened Chez Honey, a club-galerie in Montparnasse, an exhibition space by day and a jazz club by night. Featuring his wife, Honey Johnson, a singer who had come to Europe with Rex Stuart's Band, the club was known as the place to hear modern jazz. Pete Matz accompanied on piano, as would Dick Allen, and Art Simmons. Don Byas, The club attracted an international crowd. Patrons included Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliette Greco, Eartha Kitt, Orson Welles, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Marcel Marceau. Painter Larry Rivers, who arrived in 1950, jammed with the professional musicians.

In 1949 Gentry had a solo exhibition at Galerie Seine on the Paris left bank.

In November 1951 Gentry left for New York. It proved a difficult adjustment; in 1953 after an exhibition at Burr Gallery, New York City. he returned to Paris, on the same boat as two painters who would become important friends: Beauford Delaney and Larry Potter.

No longer on the GI Bill, Gentry worked as a host in Paris jazz clubs, until he was tapped in 1955 to be a promoter, arranging entertainment for the Allied and American Armed Forces in France and Germany. He met many American musicians and dancers including Mary Lou Williams, Maya Angelou, and others in Paris like Art Buchwald, and Moune de Revelle, .

During the mid-1950s, Gentry frequented the cafe Tournon where he met with writers Chester Himes, Ollie Harrington, painter Larry Potter (painter).

Copenhagen 1958 - 1962

In 1959, Gentry had a successful solo exhibition at Galerie Hybler in Copenhagen, where be remained to prepare for a series of solo exhibitions in Northern Europe, in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and Netherlands. Copenhagen had a lively jazz scene and an African-American community of musicians and artists.

Gentry was soon exhibiting paintings in galleries across Northern Europe. Already friendly with a group of young Danish journalists in Paris, people saw a stylistic affinity in Gentry's paintings with the COBRA movement. Gentry was friendly with many Northern European artists who were members of the group or associated with Cobra: Ejler Bille, Robert Jacobsen, Karel Appel, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Bram Bogard, and Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo aka Corneille.

• Galerie Passpartout, Copenhagen, 1963
• Galerie Leger, Malmö, 1962
• Galerie Rudolph Meier, Davos, 1962
• Galerie Perron, Geneva, 1961
• Galerie Passpartout, Copenhagen, 1961
• Galerie Aestetica, Stockholm, 1960
• Den Frie, Copenhagen, 1960 6 +2
• Galerie Die Insel, Hamburg, 1960
• Kunstudstillningsbygning, Odense, Denmark
• Galerie Hybler, Copenhagen, 1959,
• Galerie Suzanne Bollag, Zurich, 1959

Stockholm 1963 - 1976

He relocated to Gothenburg, Sweden in 1963, and was in Stockholm in 1965.

In Sweden he developed friendships with sculptors Torsten Rehnqvist and Willy Gordon, and painters Bengt Lindström, Gösta Werner (painter), and Uno Svensson.

• Galerie Doktor Glas, Stockholm, 1968
• Galerie Marya, Copenhagen, 1967
• Galerie Zodiaque, Brussels, 1967
• Vikingsborg Museum, Helsingborg, 1966
• Lorensbergs Konstsalong, Gothenberg, 1966
• Västerbottens Läns Konstförening, Umeå, 1966
• Modern Nordisk Konstgalleri, Karlstad, 1965
• Galerie Hybler, Copenhagen, 1964
• Philips, Amsterdam, 1964
• Philips, Copenhagen, 1963
• Galerie Modern, Silkeborg, 1963
• Lorensbergs Konstsalong, Gothenburg, 1963

While living in Scandinavia, Gentry kept a studio in Paris through through 1980. His dedication to mobility differentiated Gentry from most of his fellow American expatriates. He followed the model of artists like Cuban Surrealist Wifredo Lam, who kept studios in more than one country. Montparnasse in Paris remained a central hub for the European art world.

In Stockholm in 1975 he was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts (Kungliga Akademien för de fria konsterna), which traveled to Norrkopings Museum, and Amos Andersson Museum in Helsinki, Finland.

Malmo, Sweden 1980 - 2003

In later years, after working in France and continuing to work in New York, he based himself in Malmo, Sweden, an ideal city to work on paintings and prints for exhibition in art galleries in Sweden, in Copenhagen, Milan, Amsterdam, and other continental cities.

Home in New York 1969 - 2003

"Explorations in the City of Light" at Studio Museum in Harlem (1996) traveled to Chicago Cultural Center, Milwaukee Museum of Art, Fort Worth Art Museum and New Orleans Museum of Art. Other important group exhibitions included An Ocean Apart, Studio Museum in Harlem.

Since his death he has had major exhibitions at the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, at the James E. Lewis Museum at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD, and Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University.

The Hotel Chelsea

In 1971, Moderna Museet Director Pontus Hulten recommended the Chelsea Hotel as an ideal residence for Gentry and his family to take an apartment for a year's stay in New York City. Welcomed by hotel manager Stanley Bard, Gentry discovered a number of artist colleagues from Paris already living and working there. An ideal fit, having a home in New York made it possible for Gentry to return many times and become part of the New York art world that had emerged in the years since he had left for Paris in 1946. Gentry became a permanent resident in 1982. A Gentry painting is exhibited in the Hotel lobby.

Exhibitions

• Diggs Gallery, Winston Salem State University, NC, 2008
• G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, New York, NY, 2008, 2003
• Rush Rhees Library Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 2007
• Gordon Parks Gallery, College of New Rochelle, Bronx, NY, 2007
• James E. Lewis Museum, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, 2007
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Amistad Center for Art and Culture, Hartford, CT, 2006
• Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, 2005
• G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2004, 2000, 1998
• Alitash Kebede Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2004, 1994, 1987
• Parish Gallery, Georgetown, Washington, DC, 2003
• G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Detroit, MI, 2003
• Steve Turner Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA, 2002
• Macy Gallery, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2000
• Molloy College, Rockville Centre, NY, 2000
• G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Birmingham, MI, 1999, 1996, 1991
• Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA, 1998
• Quick Art Center, St. Bonaventure University, Olean, NY, 1995
• Galerie Futura, Stockholm, Sweden, 1993
• Ragnarpers, Gärsnäs, Sweden, 1993
• Falsterbo Konsthall, Falsterbo, Sweden, 1992
• Lilla Galleriet, Helsingborg, Sweden, 1992, 1985
• Gallerihuset, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1991
• Bülowska Gallery, Malmö, Sweden, 1991, , 1987
• Gallery Altes Rathaus, Inzlingen (Basel), Germany, 1990
• Galerie Futura, Stockholm, Sweden, 1989
• La Maison Francaise, New York University, NY, 1986
• Gooijer Fine Arts, Amsterdam, Holland, 1985
• Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, Italy, 1984
• Biblioteca Comunale di Milano, Milan, Italy, 1984
• Gallery Asbæk, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1983
• Galerie Oscar, Stockholm, Sweden, 1981
• Randall Gallery, New York, NY, 1978
• Fabien Carlsson Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1977
• Montclair State College, Montclair, NJ, 1977
• Amos Andersson Museum, Helsinki, Finland, (Retrospective), 1976
• Norrköping Konstmuseum, Norrköping, Sweden, (Retrospective), 1976
• Kungliga Konstakademien för de Fria Konsten [The Royal Art Academy], Stockholm, SE (Retrospective), 1975
• Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY, 1974
• Galerie Pinx, Helsinki, Finland, 1974
• Oslos Konstförening, Oslo, Norway, 1973
• Selma Burke Art Center, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, 1972
• Stadsgalleriet, Halmstad, Sweden, 1970
• Klippans Kulturreservat, Malmö, Sweden, 1969

Selected Collections

His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY); the American Art Museum and Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian, Washington, DC); the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY); the Masur Museum (Monroe, LA); the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the Amistad Center for Art and Culture(Hartford, CT); the Dayton Art Institute (Dayton, OH); and the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY). In Europe and beyond, his work is collected by the Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden), Norrköpings Art Museum (Norrköping, Sweden), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands), National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi, India)and Biblioteque Nationale de Paris (France), as well as many private collections.

Bibliography

Blatt, K., N'Namdi, J., and Rose, M. A., (Eds.) (2008) Herbert Gentry: The Man, The Master, The Magic . Essays by Najjar Abdul-Musawwir, Brenda Delany, Herbert Gentry, Mary Anne Rose, Wim Roefs, Lewis Tanner Moore, George R. N'Namdi. Chicago: G. R. N'Namdi Gallery [[2]]

Bearden, R. and Henderson, H. (1993) A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present. New York: Pantheon Books

Bomani, A. and Rooks, B., eds. (1992) Paris Connections : African American artists in Paris, Essays by Ted Joans, Theresa Leininger, Marie-Francoise Sanconie. Fort Bragg, CA: Q.E.D. Press.

Bowker, R. R. (1993) Who’s Who in American Art-1994: 1993-1994, 20th Edition, New York: Bowker.

Delany, B. K. (2003) Post-World War II Expatriate Painters: The Question of a Black Aesthetic. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Doctoral dissertation.

Gardner, Paul, “When France was home to African-American Artists” The Smithsonian Magazine, Volume 26, No. 12, March pp.106-112.

Harrisberg, Halley K. (Ed) (2001) African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VIII. Exhibition Catalogue New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

Igoe, Lynn Moody (1981) Two Hundred and Fifty Years of African American Art: An Annotated Bibliography. New York : R.R. Bowker

Kirwin, L., (1991) Herbert Gentry Oral History Interview for the Archives of American Art, May 23, 1991. Washington, DC: Archives of American Art Smithsonian. Available on line: www.aaa.si.edu

Patton, S. F. (1998) African-American Art. Oxford and New York: Oxford University, p. 161, 164, 167, 176, 177, 178.

Phillips Museum (2005) Face to Face: Herbert Gentry, Essays by Brenda Delany, Bill Hutson, Mary Anne Rose. Lancaster, PA: Franklin and Marshall College.

Riggs, T. (1997) St. James Guide to Black Artists. Detroit, MI: St. James Press and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Schwartzman, Myron. (2004) “Romare Bearden and Herbert Gentry, Tribute to a Friendship” Alitash Kebede Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Exhibition Brochure.

Schwartzman, M. (1990) Romare Bearden : His Life and his Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams. pp. 116, 162-72,167,168.

Selz, Peter “Herbert Gentry” Essay for gallery exhibition, 1994. Los Angeles, CA: Alitash Kebede Gallery. Exhibition brochure.

Studio Museum in Harlem. (1982) An Ocean Apart: African American Artists Abroad. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, October 8, 1982-January 9, 1983.

Studio Museum in Harlem (1996) Explorations in the City of Light. Essays by Michel Fabre, Valerie Mercer and Peter Selz. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem. January 18-June 2, 1996. Texts by Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Catherine Bernard, Peter Selz, Michel Fabre, Valerie J. Mercer.

Links

• Herbert Gentry Website http://www.herbertgentry.com