Wrecking Crew

Charles L. Sallee, Jr.

ca. 1940 · Soft-ground etching · Modern and Contemporary Art

The first African-American artist to graduate from the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art), Sallee worked as a printmaker and, during the Depression, a muralist for the Works Progress Administration. He was the leader of the Karamu Group of printmakers, formed by artists connected to the Karamu House, an African-American theater and community center that premiered many of Langston Hughes’s plays. In his prints, Sallee frequently depicted scenes of urban labor and the Black experience in northern cities. Here, workers cart bricks and other debris out of a building in the process of being demolished.

Artist

Charles L. Sallee, Jr.

Date

ca. 1940

Medium

Soft-ground etching

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 1999