Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Glorie Jean and Her Friends

Three femal figures with yellow, gray, and orange hair standing side by side on</p>

Henry Speller
1903-1997

Glorie Jean and Her Friends

1987
18 1/16 x 24 in. (45.9 x 60.9 cm)
Porous-point pen, wax crayon, and graphite on wove paper.
2018.103

Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection and purchase on the Manley Family Fund.

Notes
Speller worked as a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta region before relocating to Memphis in 1939. He worked as a landscaper and garbage collector, and found solace in art and music. In drawings such as this one, which depicts three semi-nude women on a vibrant purple ground, the sexuality of Speller's subjects serves as a metaphor for a freedom that he felt was out of his own reach.
Classification
Century Drawings