Charles McGee | "Untitled (Table Top Still Life)"

#shorts
To kick off #BlackHistoryMonth we welcome you to learn more about Charles McGee, (December 15, 1924 – February 4, 2021) American artist and educator known for creating paintings, assemblages, and sculptures.

McGee was born on a sharecropper’s farm in Clemson, South Carolina, and moved to Detroit with his family when he was 10 years old. After his military service, McGee became a pioneering force for contemporary art in Detroit, establishing Gallery 7 and the Charles McGee School of Art in 1968, as well as teaching for many years at Eastern Michigan University.

McGee studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit on the GI Bill after serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Second World War. His art focused on representational imagery until the 1960s, when it became increasingly abstract.

This painting exhibits McGee’s deft hand with pattern and color, and continues the Cubist still life tradition with its angular forms and unnatural perspective, and introduces an updated subject - colorful, mass-produced candies.

???? You can find this work on view #AtTheMFA in our American Art, 19th-21st Centuries Galleries.

???? Charles McGee, American, 1924-2021, Untitled (Table Top Still Life) (detail), 1957, Oil on Masonite Board, Museum purchase with funds donated by Jim Sweeny

#blackart #MFAStPete #museum #MFACollection #arthistory #knowyourhistory #MFACollection #CharlesMcGee #blackartist