Family Ark ( Center )

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John Biggers

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• 1992

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• Offset Lithograph

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• Image/sheet: 29.5 x 21.5″

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• 60 prints in this edition

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About the Print

nJohn T. Biggers researched some of Sub-Saharan Africa’s visual traditions. Family Ark, 1992, is a grand story divided into three sections—a triptych—designed by Biggers to be shown all together, with the center panel  on its own, or with the side panels paired together (not shown here). Aspects of symmetry, geometry, and pattern can be found everywhere. One of the prints is made up of monochromatic sheets that are only printed in gray and green. Another uses additional earth colors to create six different presentations of the same print. Biggers’ use of cross-cultural motifs such as the traditional washboard and three-legged iron pot, altar, and animals such as turtles, snakes, and elephants is symbolic and serves as a metaphor for life, death, and renewal in African and African American cultures.n_{—Adapted from Brandywine Workshop and Archives records and  “Fresh, Human and Personal: Signature of Brandywine Workshop,” Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection (Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2004)}nnn

John Biggers

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AmericannBorn April 13, 1924 Gastonia, NC

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About the Artist

nBorn in Gastonia, NC, printmaker and muralist John Biggers earned a BFA, MFA, and PhD from Pennsylvania State University, University Park.nnIn 1949, Biggers founded what is now the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Texas Southern University, Houston. He initiated a mural program for TSU art majors in which every senior student was expected to complete a mural on campus: there are now 114 such murals on the university campus.nnBiggers was one of the first Black American artists to visit Africa to study African traditions and culture. Funded by a grant from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), he and his wife traveled for six months in Ghana, Benin (then called Dahomey), Nigeria, and Togo in West Africa.n_{—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records}