McArthur Binion

American, born 1946

BiographyMcArthur Binion was born in Macon, Mississippi, in 1946. He was raised in Detroit and currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Binion was the first African-American to graduate from Cranbrook and while his 40-year investigation of abstract painting has been continual, his work was not widely seen until several years ago. In the 1970s, Binion lived in New York City and was loosely part of a group of African American painters who, despite the pressures to make artwork that was politically motivated, devoted themselves to abstraction. Binion’s distinctive insertion of narrative and personal history and his emphasis on content, differentiated his work from the more reductive Minimalist practices of other artists and continues to do so today.

Binion’s works are included in the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, VIVA ARTE VIVA, curated by Christine Macel, and have been featured in solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, and the University of Maryland University College Gallery as well as group exhibitions at Prospect.3, Louisiana; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Missouri.

Binion's works are in major public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.

--(Bibliograpical Information via Galerie Lelong)

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