Publisher: Pacific and Primary Information

This new edition of 'Contextures', originally published in 1978 as an exhibition catalogue by the legendary New York gallery Just Above Midtown (JAM), is now reproduced as a colour facsimile. Edited by gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant and Marcy S. Philips, this groundbreaking publication traces the history of Black artists working in abstraction from 1945 to 1978, while articulating an emerging movement of Black conceptual art in the 1970s.

This publication fulfils an essential mission by placing Black artists within the canon of post-war abstract art — still largely dominated by white artists — and contains numerous texts by Goode Bryant and Philips alongside works by 25 artists: Banerjee, Frank Bowling, Donna Byars, Ed Clark, Houston Conwill, John Dowell, Mel Edwards, Wendy Ward Ehlers, Fred Eversley, Susan Fitzsimmons, Sam Gilliam, Gini Hamilton, David Hammons, Manuel Hughes, Suzanne Jackson, Noah Jemison, James Little, Al Loving, Senga Nengudi, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Sharon Sutton, Randy Williams and William T. Williams. A recently commissioned afterword by Thomas (T.) Jeans Lax, curator of the exhibition 'Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces' at the Museum of Modern Art, is also included.