Artwork Page for Primal Force

Details / Information for Primal Force

Primal Force

1975

Nelson Stevens

(American, 1938–2022)
Culture
America
Medium
color screenprint
Measurements
Sheet: 74.1 x 55 cm (29 3/16 x 21 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2024.86
Copyright
© artist or artist's estate
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

Nelson Stevens worked as an arts educator at the Cleveland Museum of Art during the late 1960s.

Description

Nelson Stevens spent formative years of his artistic career at Karamu House before joining AfriCOBRA, a Chicago-based art collective whose goal was Black empowerment. As an instructor of drawing and design at Karamu and a gallery lecturer at the CMA during the late 1960s, Stevens promoted an artistic style that he saw as characteristic of and appealing to Black Americans, using bright colors and repetitive lines and forms to depict the human figure. He originally printed the image seen here alongside the word “uhuru,” which means “freedom” in the Swahili language.
A vertically oriented print depicts a face in swirling fragments of black, bright red, orange, and yellow, looking up. Their Afro and upper edge of their forehead extends just off the page. A solid medium-dark purple shows through the lower right corner and in fragments on the face. White writing is scrawled on a black strip continuing the lower edge of the neck.

Primal Force

1975

Nelson Stevens

(American, 1938–2022)
America

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