Edmund Gaither, the founding Director of the NCAAA Museum in Boston, and curator of Afro-American Artists, New York, and Boston, wrote that the exhibition “presents a rich, high-quality selection of works representing all of the directions that Afro-American artists are exploring.” He defined three categories: 1) artists belonging to the body of mainstream American art; 2) “Black art,” which is didactic, political work; and 3) Neo Africanism, which is rooted in the study of traditional African art. Among the participating artists were Ellsworth Ausby, Joe Overstreet, Thomas Sills, and Paul Waters.

New Black Artists at the Brooklyn Museum was billed as “the first recent exhibition of Black artists in a major New York museum.” It was conceived by Edward Taylor, Executive Director of the Harlem Cultural Council, and featured “12 predominantly young, relatively unknown artists.” Among them were Ellsworth Ausby, Joe Overstreet, and Anderson Pigatt.

Black Artists: Two Generations revisited a 1944 exhibition of African-American artists, also at the Newark Museum. For the revised show, artist Paul Waters served as a consultant, selecting all of the contemporary artwork. It was intended to “bring the museum and the community together, affording local artists an opportunity to show their works.” Waters’s own work was included, along with that of Joe Overstreet.

Ellsworth Ausby was a significant American artist whose works were concerned with exploring the “infinite possibilities of two-dimensional space.” He experimented with supports and surfaces, creating multi-part shaped canvas constructions arranged directly on the wall. His work is connected to Afrofuturism and the music of visionary Sun Ra. Above all, Ausby was dedicated to reflecting a deeply rooted African aesthetic and cultural heritage. He wrote, “It is a fact that the Black image ‘is’ and has always been established.” Ausby’s paintings of the late 1960s combine stylized biomorphic and figurative elements with geometric shapes and patterning. His unstretched canvases of the 1970s utilize high-keyed color and suggest sonic patterns and rhythms.

Anderson Pigatt was an African American self-taught sculptor who worked with wood. Based in Baltimore, MD, he worked as an antique furniture restorer, and launched his art career in the 1960s. His sculptural work is direct and political, exploring themes of race and belonging, colonization, and memorial. Pigatt believed that wood had a spirit, an ethos that is exemplified by his 1969 transformation of a Harlem oak tree stump into a sculpture mirroring a Black power salute. The sculpture was designed as a symbol protesting governmental development in the neighborhood.

Paul Waters, who still lives and works on the Bowery in Lower Manhattan, made canvas collages in which painted silhouettes suggesting primordial forms and imaginary animals were arranged and collaged onto canvas supports in rhythmic patterns. His work is concerned with both direct communication and an intuitive process. Waters exclusively uses his hands and fingers to apply paint, rather than brushes. The paintings reflect his interest in indigenous traditions, teaching, and children’s books, as well as Western painting. His use of scissors as a “drawing” tool connects his work to that of Matisse.

The abstract paintings of Thomas Sills respond to natural phenomena and forces. They have a delicate and unusual palette and synthesize the figure/ground relationship with optical equivalencies between colors, and free-flowing outwardly-radiating patterns. Like Waters, Sills did not use brushes; instead, he applied paint with rags and cloths. This gives his work a unique softness. Colors meld into one another at the edges, lending the paintings tactility, space, and an inner light. Sills, who grew up in Castalia, North Carolina in a large family, was not exposed to art or art-making in his youth or young adulthood. He began to paint—almost clandestinely—in his late 30s and went on to be the subject of four well-received solo shows at Betty Parsons between 1955 and 1961.