Add Studio Museum in Harlem to Your Summer Art To Do List

Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective is a new art exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The exhibition looks back at black artists painting during the height of the civil rights movement who met for weekly discussions in an artist's studio to discuss the role their art should play. The group called Spiral, originally formed in response to the March on Washington, a critical turning point in the American civil rights movement.  Of the original fifteen members, ten are represented in this show. The art shares a modern abstract aesthetic very typical of American art of that period. Most paintings are in oil. The absolute standouts are the large colorful canvases by Emma Amos, the only woman represented in this New York exhibition. Her figures of mixed ethnicity are depicted with flat geometric shapes that do not diminish their eroticism. Reminiscent of Gauguin, Amos’s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and other prominent collections.