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1 The rigor of his own education instilled in Saunders a commitment to education-a responsibility to share his knowledge through teaching. Before earning his BFA from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1960, he received a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and also studied at the Barnes Foundation. He regularly saw exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art and has said that his detailed memory of those early experiences informs his painting. © Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive.īorn and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Raymond Saunders became interested in art in the first grade, and his talent was recognized at a young age. Black-and-white Kodak safety film, 4 x 5 inches. 20 fullscreen Charles “Teenie” Harris, Raymond Saunders looking toward Downtown Pittsburgh, 1955. Saunders is a recipient of a Ford Foundation Award, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, a Prix de Rome Fellowship in painting, a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts awards.Charles “Teenie” Harris, Raymond Saunders looking toward Downtown Pittsburgh, 1955. His 1971 portrait of boxer Jack Johnson is part of the permanent collection at PAFA. His work is part of permanent collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and many other museums nationwide. He created limited edition posters for the 1984 Olympic Games and that same year was the illustrator of the original book cover art and posters for David Mamet’s award-winning play Glengarry, Glen Ross. While Black is a Color has been a tremendous influence to generations of artists, it was a single work by Saunders that is only a part of a distinguished career as an internationally celebrated artist. Counter-racism, hyper-awareness of difference of separateness arising within the black artist himself, is just as destructive to his work, his life – as the threat of white prejudice coming at him from outside.” “Art projects beyond race and color, beyond America. Saunders wrote those words in 1967, and they still resound today.
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“Certainly the American black artist is in a unique position to express certain aspects of the current American scene, both negative and positive, but if he restricts himself to these alone, he may risk becoming a mere cipher, a walking protest, a politically prescribed stereotype, negating his own mystery and allowing himself to be shuffled off into an arid overall mystique.” A 2003 exhibition of African-American Art at the Corcoran Gallery featuring Saunders work was named for the influential pamphlet, which argued that African-American artists should not be tethered to the notion of a race-based approach of making art. His self-published 1967 pamphlet Black is a Color is still prominently discussed in college classrooms. While his work as an artist is at the forefront, Saunders also changed perceptions within the art world with his words. ’57) influence on American art since his graduation from PAFA has been profound.