Artwork Page for Anna Deavere Smith

Details / Information for Anna Deavere Smith

Series Title: The Gift

Anna Deavere Smith

1990–94

Emma Amos

(American, 1937–2020)
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Culture
America
Medium
watercolor
Measurements
Sheet: 65.8 x 50.3 cm (25 7/8 x 19 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2023.126.35
Copyright
© Emma Amos; Courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

Emma Amos includes a self-portrait and a portrait of her daughter India in this work.

Description

The Gift comprises forty-eight individual watercolor portraits of women artists, writers, and curators in Emma Amos’s community in New York in the early 1990s. The women pictured belong to different generations and are from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Amos created the work as a gift for her daughter India, on the occasion of India’s twentieth birthday.
A vertically oriented watercolor depicts Anna Deavere Smith, a woman with medium skin tone, from the shoulders up as she looks at us. Voluminous, curly hair is rendered in loose washes of gray, ochre, and brown. She has small hoop earrings and closed lips. Fluid washes create her dark gray garment, ending in visible paint drips. In the bottom right, red script reads "Anna June 17 1994" above faint text along the bottom edge.

Anna Deavere Smith

1990–94

Emma Amos

(American, 1937–2020)
America

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