African Affinities/Expressionist Essences: Vincent Smith’s Eight Etchings, 1965-1966

Mounted in honor of African-American Heritage Month, this exhibition featured eight etchings made by African-American artist Vincent Smith in 1965–1966 at the height of the civil-rights movement.

Presented alongside African masks and prints by Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, German printmakers who were great influences, Smith’s prints exhibited the stylistic treatment and overtly political content characteristic of German Expressionism, as well as the motifs and forms of the tribal masks that continue to influence his work today.