Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight
The Menil Collection, Houston, TX
Jan 24 – Jul 13, 2025
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1972
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
88 x 98 x 23 1/2 inches canvas size (present overall installation: 115 x 100 x 49 1/2 inches)
Dimensions Variable
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is the first major museum exhibition in thirty years devoted to the work of this pioneering abstract painter. Renowned for his innovative approach to non-representational painting, American artist Joe Overstreet (1933–2019) consistently sought to intertwine abstraction and social politics.
This presentation will include his landmark Flight Pattern series of radially suspended paintings from the early 1970s, as well as related bodies of work from the 1960s and 1990s. Overstreet made a significant contribution to postwar art, positioning abstraction as an expansive tool for exploring the idea of freedom and the Black experience in the United States.
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue with new scholarly texts and installation images from the exhibition, available in late spring.
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is organized by Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art, The Menil Collection, in collaboration with the artist’s estate.
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1967
oil on linen construction with shaped support
55.0h x 48.0w x 3.0d in
139.7h x 121.92w x 6.35d cm
By 1967, Overstreet started working with shaped canvases. He used wooden dowels shaped with a jigsaw and hand tools to make intricate stretchers, painting figures in patterns drawn from Aztec, Benin, and Egyptian cultures. Overstreet said, “I was beginning to look at my art in a different light, not as protest, but as a statement about people…By 1970 I had broken free from notions that paintings had to be on the wall in rectangular shapes.” Several shaped works from this series were exhibited in the landmark Brooklyn Museum Exhibition "New Black Artists," in 1969, which also traveled to Columbia University.
Joe Overstreet
Great Mother of All, 1970
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
72.0h x 193.0w in
182.88h x 490.22w cm
Overstreet was a major innovator in terms of taking the canvas off the wall. In his “Flight Pattern” series of the early 1970s, painted, unstretched canvases are tethered with ropes to the ceiling, walls, and floor.
Overstreet was concerned with geometry and pressure points, balanced against the spontaneity of a portable, unstretched canvas that would respond to multiple environments. Many assume mandala-like imagery, others bird-like extensions. Overstreet states, “I began to make paintings that were tent-like. I was making nomadic art, and I could roll it up and travel...We had survived with our art by rolling it up and moving it all over... I felt like a nomad myself, with all the insensitivity in America.” Over the past several decades, Overstreet has been a relentless experimenter – investigating both the spatial and textural possibilities of painting, and also complex cultural histories.
Joe Overstreet
Gorée, 1993
oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
In Senegal for the Dakar Biennale of 1992, Overstreet visited the Slave Castle at Gorée Island. When he returned to New York he immediately embarked on a "Door of No Return" series of large stretched canvas paintings. These works produced over nearly two years allowed Overstreet to make full use of his interest in paint texture, and the tenets of sacred geometry.
Overstreet said of the series: “they are based on the experience of returning where my ancestors left two or three hundred years ago…the paintings are personal, emotional examinations of my past, present and future and arrived after years of blind darkness.”
Joe Overstreet
Baobob and Fish, 1993
oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
Corrine Jennings writes that “in these works he has managed to transmute wrath into majestic, painterly concepts of composition, color and scale.” The tactility of the ancient walls at Gorée, which conjure the presence of suffering, are rendered through the texture and eroded marks of Overstreet’s paintings. The massive scale of these works reflects on the immensity of the Atlantic ocean crossing, the Middle Passage, and the vast plains of the Sahel region. Overstreet represents the dry expanse of land and its drifting opaque dust through a technique of lifting and feathering the paint, and suggesting searing white sunlight through layered transparencies of color. The patterned paintings are also vaguely reminiscent of Senegalese tapestries.
The vertical opening of the Door of No Return, a narrow passage which opens up to the sea, informs the structure of his paintings. At the center of these works, Overstreet depicts highly visible or thinly veiled geometric structures which reflect on the architecture of slavery and the role of geometry used to both imprison and to navigate.
Exhibition flyer for Joe Overstreet: Stretch Painting, Berkeley Rotary Art Garden Center, CA, 1970.
About the Artist
Joe Overstreet was an artist and activist who pushed the boundaries of painting through decades of experiments in abstraction. He began his career in the Bay Area as a fixture of the Beat scene, living in the North Beach section of San Francisco. After moving to New York, he and his partner Corrine Jennings established Kenkeleba House, a gallery that has presented innumerable exhibitions of work by artists of color and women. As part of a generation of Black artists who fought for their visibility in an exclusionary art world, Overstreet was committed to creating paintings that stand alone on formal merit – independent of his identity – and taking an organizer’s role in providing exhibition opportunities to his peers.
Overstreet’s work can also be found in the collections of the The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; Art Bridges, Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada; and the Menil Collection, Houston, TX.
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1967
oil on linen construction with shaped support
55.0h x 48.0w x 3.0d in
139.7h x 121.92w x 6.35d cm
(JOVE001)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled (Sun Ra series), 1967
oil on canvas construction
40.0h x 28.0w x 3.0d in
101.6h x 71.75w x 6.35d cm
(JOVE002)
Joe Overstreet
Justice, Faith, Hope, and Peace, 1968
acrylic on constructed canvas on 4 panels
90.0h x 191.0w x 3.0d in
228.28h x 486.09w x 7.62d cm
(JOVE013)
Joe Overstreet
Great Mother of All, 1970
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
72.0h x 193.0w in
182.88h x 490.22w cm
(JOVE078)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1971
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
Dimensions variable 102 x 116 x 37 inches canvas size (present overall installation 115 x 158 x 102 inches)
(JOVE044)
Joe Overstreet
Shadow and Light, 1971
Acrylic on canvas with grommets
Dimensions variable 116 x 80 x 10 inches canvas size (present overall installation 130 x 90 x 10 inches)
(JOVE069)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1972
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
Dimensions variable 88 x 98 x 23 1/2 inches canvas size (present overall installation 115 x 100 x 49 1/2 inches)
(JOVE023)
Joe Overstreet
Screaming Hell, 1972
acrylic on constructed canvas
73.0h x 83.0w in
185.42h x 211.77w cm
(JOVE036)
Joe Overstreet
Gorée, 1993
oil on Canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE177)
Joe Overstreet
Exit Dust, 1993
oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE174)
Joe Overstreet
Cross Currents, 1993
oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE173)
Joe Overstreet
Kermel, 1993
oil on canvas
122.0h x 146.0w in
309.88h x 370.84w cm
(JOVE171)
Joe Overstreet
Baobob and Fish, 1993
Oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE170)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1967
oil on linen construction with shaped support
55.0h x 48.0w x 3.0d in
139.7h x 121.92w x 6.35d cm
(JOVE001)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled (Sun Ra series), 1967
oil on canvas construction
40.0h x 28.0w x 3.0d in
101.6h x 71.75w x 6.35d cm
(JOVE002)
Joe Overstreet
Justice, Faith, Hope, and Peace, 1968
acrylic on constructed canvas on 4 panels
90.0h x 191.0w x 3.0d in
228.28h x 486.09w x 7.62d cm
(JOVE013)
Joe Overstreet
Great Mother of All, 1970
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
72.0h x 193.0w in
182.88h x 490.22w cm
(JOVE078)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1971
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
Dimensions variable 102 x 116 x 37 inches canvas size (present overall installation 115 x 158 x 102 inches)
(JOVE044)
Joe Overstreet
Shadow and Light, 1971
Acrylic on canvas with grommets
Dimensions variable 116 x 80 x 10 inches canvas size (present overall installation 130 x 90 x 10 inches)
(JOVE069)
Joe Overstreet
Untitled, 1972
acrylic on constructed canvas with metal grommets and cotton rope
Dimensions variable 88 x 98 x 23 1/2 inches canvas size (present overall installation 115 x 100 x 49 1/2 inches)
(JOVE023)
Joe Overstreet
Screaming Hell, 1972
acrylic on constructed canvas
73.0h x 83.0w in
185.42h x 211.77w cm
(JOVE036)
Joe Overstreet
Gorée, 1993
oil on Canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE177)
Joe Overstreet
Exit Dust, 1993
oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE174)
Joe Overstreet
Cross Currents, 1993
oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE173)
Joe Overstreet
Kermel, 1993
oil on canvas
122.0h x 146.0w in
309.88h x 370.84w cm
(JOVE171)
Joe Overstreet
Baobob and Fish, 1993
Oil on canvas
120.0h x 144.0w in
304.8h x 365.76w cm
(JOVE170)