Humphrey employs visual metaphors to channel her experience growing up as an African American woman. Everyday objects become recurring symbols in her prints: zebras embody the strength of her heritage; a plate of yams represents nourishment or survival. Whether celebrating her childhood or confronting her personal fears, Humphrey’s artwork navigates her life story to convey hope, possibility, and love.
Margo Humphrey presents over forty-five color plates, from the artist’s early abstract art through her groundbreaking lithographs in the figurative narrative style. The text by Adrienne L. Childs considers the memories and events that inspired Humphrey’s powerful oeuvre, and the foreword by David C. Driskell places Humphrey in the forefront of contemporary printmaking.
Since Humphrey’s first solo exhibition in 1965, her art has been exhibited and collected worldwide and now resides in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Humphrey has lectured and taught across the world and is currently a tenured professor of art at the University of Maryland, College Park.
ADRIENNE L. CHILDS is curator-in-residence at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her PhD in nineteenth-century European art from the University of Maryland, College Park, as well as an MBA from Howard University and a BA from Georgetown University. Dr. Childs specializes in twentieth-century African American art, as well as race and representation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art. She teaches African American and European art history and is the author of Evolution: Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell (Pomegranate, 2007).
DAVID C. DRISKELL is Distinguished University Professor of Art Emeritus, University of Maryland. A noted artist, curator, scholar, and lecturer, Driskell received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2000. His paintings were exhibited in 1993 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters and are in many public and private collections worldwide.