David C. Driskell’s story started in Eatonton, Georgia, where he came of age during the Jim Crow era, but when it ended in 2020—he died at age 88 from complications related to COVID—he was a distinguished professor emeritus who served as chair of the University of Maryland’s art department. Driskell earned a bachelor’s degree in art from Howard University in 1955 and a master’s degree from Catholic University in ’62. He went on to teach at several institutions of higher learning, including his alma mater Howard, as well as Talladega College, Fisk University, and finally UMD. Aside from his years as a professor, Driskell was also an artist, curator, and art collector. Largely instrumental in the development of Black art during the mid-20th century up until his death, he was a champion of many Black artists who are revered today. 

The exhibition David C. Driskell and Friends: Creativity, Collaboration, and Friendship, currently on view at UMD’s Driskell Center, illustrates that the relationships Driskell had with the 30-plus artists featured were pivotal to the development of the African American artistic canon. Artworks by some of the most acclaimed Black artists are on view alongside some of Driskell’s own paintings and prints. The exhibition is carefully curated to show the extent of Driskell’s stylistic art practice and how it aligns with the works by his contemporaries and mentors. Alma Thomas, Aaron Douglas, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Norman Lewis are among the many artists featured in the exhibition.

“The artists [featured] are people who had relationships with him from all facets of his life,” says the Driskell Center’s assistant director Abby Eron. “Some of the artists were his teachers, some were his students, others were collaborators in printmaking studios. And there were people whose work inspired his work.”

The exhibition includes artworks by some of the most acclaimed Black artists from the 20th century, but more than that, it showcases works in a range of styles that are rarely captured by some artists in their more popular pieces. Through this exhibition, viewers witness the evolution of Black Art throughout the 20th century as documented by Driskell—there’s really no one better to tell it.

Driskell and Friends features colorful paintings in Lawrence’s distinctive primary colors and quintessential collage work depicting Black life by Bearden. But Driskell, who remained an avid art collector, was also able to acquire and accumulate stylistically atypical works by artists such as Betye Saar, Lewis, and Douglas. For fans of Black Art familiar with these artists’ work, seeing the differences in styles is sure to amaze.

Saar is known for her three-dimensional assemblages, but Driskell and Friends features three small collaged serigraphs on paper from her “Bookmarks in the Pages of Life Series” instead. 

Instead of collecting and arranging found objects she typically does in her work, Saar uses paper images of trees, drums, and advertisements, as well as sheet music, to create Black narratives on one-dimensional surfaces here. 

Lewis, who was known for his painstakingly detailed angular abstractions, has a painting in Driskell & Friends that departs from his norm. “Granada,” an abstract painting of a shapeless soft haze of black, white, yellow, and brown paints intermingling on the canvas, is without form or structure. 

But “Cityscape,” a painting by Douglas, might be the biggest standout in the exhibition. Typically, Douglas’ paintings come in muted colors, showing abstracted African-influenced human figured silhouettes foreground to imagined scenes of communities convening. His pieces “The Judgment Day” and “Aspects of Negro Life” exemplify the ethos of the Harlem Renaissance, as they depict Black communal space. But in “Cityscape,” a watercolor realist landscape painting, bright sunlight shines on a city and the vivid green trees that line the boulevard are lush. People dressed in bright, colorful clothing move about the streets. And the buildings in the distance, blocked by the trees, are carefully rendered. Whereas his familiar works are Afrocentric in style, “Cityscape,” absent of Douglas’ signature figures, could really have been painted by anyone. Seeing a famous artwork in person is definitely a treat, but seeing an artwork in a style atypical of a familiar artist might be even more special.

The exhibition has already traveled to Wilkes University’s Sordoni Gallery and California Museum of Photography at the University of California Riverside. Next it will travel to the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery. But for the local iteration of the exhibition, Eron and Jordana Saggese, director of the Driskell Center, collaboratively curated this showing. “What we were trying to do was to create these very intentional pairings of works by Driskell with works by the friends in the show,” says Eron. Together, the two created connections between Driskell and the other artists featured by addressing style, subject matter, and chronology. These curatorial connections are exemplified in several spaces throughout the exhibition but most notably as you enter the gallery, where Thomas’ “Untitled, 1966” and Driskell’s “Five Blue Notes” are paired. Both abstract artworks employing similar color palettes, use short, dashed brushstrokes to move color on the canvas in grid-like organization. The similarities show the influence Thomas had on Driskell’s artistic practice.

“This represents a history of 20th century African American art,” Eron says, “There’s great teaching value to this and we are on a university campus with students who are studying [art history]. To see this historical story in person is incredibly valuable.”

David C. Driskell & Friends: Creativity, Collaboration, and Friendship will be on view at the David C. Driskell Center through May 24, 2024. driskellcenter.umd.edu.