Born in 1930 into a working-class Harlem family, race relations in the United States have been a central concern of her paintings since the beginning, when segregation continued despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended it. "It was not possible to ignore the situation: everything was either black or white, and in a clear-cut way," she explains. So Ringgold created an art form that was her own, an art of miscegenation, neither black nor white, very colorful. "Painting is an offensive and defensive instrument of war," said the cubist. By referring to him, Ringgold seems to tell us that there is no greater enemy than racism. In front of the imposing format of American People Series #20: Die (1967) and the panic of its bloodied characters, all threatened by a gun or a knife, how can we not think of Guernica, its bull symbol of cruelty, its mother screaming with her child in her arms, its wounded horse neighing in pain?

Extract from the article by Emma Noyant published in the N°105 de la revue Art Absolument. Publication date: March 17, 2023.

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