I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin

Philadelphia and New York: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Universe Publishing, 1993. Very Good. Philadelphia and New York: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Universe Publishing, 1993. Quarto (28x22x1.5cm); xiii + 210pp, including chronology, list of known works, bibliography, and index. Color art reproductions and B&W documentary photographs throughout.

Illustrated card covers. Both covers and textblock clean and crisp; card spine uncreased and uncracked.

Horace Pippin (1888-1946) was the most prominent, and, in many views, the most important, Black painter on the mid-20th century American scene. In World War I, Pippin had served in the now celebrated Harlem Hellfighters battalion, made up predominantly of Black soldiers. The hell they fought was not just the enemy, but discrimination within the American military, until they were finally turned over to the command of the French to protect them from their fellow American soldiers. That experience, brought back to the U.S. after the war, provided Pippin with major direct themes and powerful indirect perspectives for the scenes of racial advocacy and daily Black life he painted.

This is the much-augmented catalog for the Pippin exhibit shown in Philadelphia, Chicago, Cncinnati, Baltimore, and New York City in 1994 and 1995.