JACK WHITTEN | CARLITTA

In the time since his first New York exhibitions at the Allan Stone Gallery in the '60s, Whitten has achieved recognition at the highest levels of the art world for his broad experimentation with materiality and technique manifest in complex meditations on his life experiences, ranging from the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the political turmoil of the 60s, to decades of summers on the island of Crete, to contemporary paradigms of racial and political friction. Built in part on a mutual infatuation with the Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky, Mr. Stone maintained a decades-long long friendship with and patronage of Whitten, acquiring numerous examples from several periods. Jack Whitten has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including an exhibition of his never-before-seen sculpture at the Met Breuer in 2018, as well as exhibitions at Hauser and Wirth in their New York and London locations in 2017. He was also included in recent group exhibitions such as The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America at the Brooklyn Museum and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London, both in 2017. Other exhibitions include Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego in 2014-2015; Jack Whitten: Erasures at SCAD Savannah College of Art and Design in 2012; an exhibition of memorial paintings at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center in Georgia in 2008; a solo show at MoMa PS1 in 2007; a ten year retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983; and a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1974. His powerful painting, 9-11-01, 2006, was included in the 56th Venice Biennale in 2013. Whitten was awarded a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September, 2016, and was inducted into the National Academy Museum and School in October, 2016. He also received an honorary doctorate from Brandeis University in May 2016. Whitten's work is in numerous prestigious collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Tate London, among others.