Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955, Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.) is an American painter and printmaker whose work examines African American culture in the United States. His art extends the grand traditions of history painting while combining populist vernacular imagery.
Educated at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles (B.F.A., 1978), Marshall moved to Chicago in 1987 soon after completing a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City. From 1993 to 2006 he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and in 1997 he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”
Marshall is best known for his richly worked large acrylic paintings on unstretched canvas that investigate modern African American vernacular existence. Whether his subject is the neighborhood barber shop or beauty salon (De Style [1993] and School of Beauty, School of Culture [2012]) or a look at the promise and reality of contemporary public housing (Better Homes Better Gardens [1994] and Many Mansions [1994]), his images mix a rough-hewn figural realism with elements of collage, signage, and lively and highly patterned settings. Marshall’s art often recalls populist banners, having scrolled ornate texts and figures looking directly at the viewer.
Some of Marshall’s paintings (Our Town [1995]) are concerned with the often under-represented Black middle class, and many employ pictorial strategies derived from self-taught artists. A few make reference to the 1960s, the period of his youth and the rise of the civil rights movement. His extended Souvenirs series (1997–98) depicts comfortable middle-class interiors. In each painting of the series, an African American figure with wings is accompanied by lists of significant African Americans of the past and, in two cases, by a banner emblazoned “We mourn our loss” and including portraits of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.
Marshall’s work was exhibited in the Whitney Biennial (1997), Documenta (1997 and 2007), and the Venice Biennale (2003). A major retrospective (“Kerry James Marshall: Mastry”; 2016–17) was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and traveled across the country to such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Another retrospective, “Kerry James Marshall: The Histories,” was held at Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2025 with plans to travel across Europe. His work can be found in the collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a testament to his efforts to offer more representations of African Americans in art museums.