In Birmingham Jail

 

Warrington Colescott

  1921 - 2018 (biography)

1963  

mixed technique intaglio: drypoint, hard and soft-ground etching, with roulette and found letterpres 

18 x 23 1/2" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

1 of 20  

titled, lower center; dated after signature 

Chapin 73; Elvehjem #76 

textured antique-white A Millbourn & Co. handmade 

published 

artist 

23470 

SOLD

"In Birmingham Jail" was a breakthrough for Warrington Colescott, whose parents from New Orleans were Creoles and his younger brother Robert is considered a major African-American artist. The composition is described in the Milwaukee Museum catalog raisonné by Mary Weaver Chapin on page 29 in the section "Research Printmaker and Mad-Dog Attack Artist": "in July 1963 he began his most ambitious work to date, 'In Birmingham Jail,' an intaglio plate incorporating etching, aquatint, drypoint, shaped plates and photoengraved plates... The subject of In Birmingham Jail, based on the civil rights struggles in the South, lambasts the racism and violence of a corrupt system. The composition is laid out in two horizontal rows of images, a device that simultaneously evokes stacked jail cells and the narrative form of comic strips. Reading the print from left to right, we see a fierce dog snapping at prisoners in the upper left quadrant, women packed tightly in a small cell in the center, and a beating on the right..." Interspersed throughout the image are photoengraved plates, including an image of school girls and Green Bay Packers' quarterback Bart Starr, action caught in mid gesture.