Two Figures

David Ross

1938 · Woodcut · Modern and Contemporary Art

Ross was a central figure in the African American art scene in Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. Part of the group of Black artists around painter George Neal, he helped found the South Side Community Art Center in 1940. Art historians have hypothesized that this dramatic woodcut may have been intended as a book illustration. Surrounded by a white, mountain-like form, the figures seem to grow out of the very earth below them. The woman, her breasts and hair hewn as though from rock, crouches in a sculptural pose beneath a man who stands with one arm raised and grips a farming tool in his other hand.

Artist

David Ross

Date

1938

Medium

Woodcut

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 1999