Dear Joan of Art,


Evening Rendezvous "I am asking this question for my parents, who have some paintings by the late Norman Lewis. Is he a significant artist?"

Yes, Norman Lewis is a significant artist. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is pleased to have a painting by Lewis in our collection, Evening Rendezvous (shown here).

The following information on the artist and his work comes from African American Art: Nineteenth- & Twentieth-Century Selections by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution):

"During the mid-1940s New York painter Norman Lewis abandoned the social realist style that he had pursued for more than a decade, having decided that painting 'an illustrative statement that merely mirrors some of the social conditions' was not an effective agent for change. Around 1946 he began exploring an overall, gestural approach to abstraction, establishing himself as the only African American among the first generation of Abstract Expressionist artists.

"Inspired by sources as diverse as music, nature, Chinese, Japanese, and African art, and modern painters from Wassily Kandinsky to Mark Tobey, Lewis freely experimented with varying approaches to abstraction. Although representational associations had diminished as his point of departure by the early 1960s, his mature works such as Evening Rendezvous nonetheless combine a haunting sense of figurative presence and the immaterial.…

"Here, a rhythmic tracery of lines, blurred and skittering, hints at standing and mounted figures moving processionally through a dusky mist of refined yet sensuous layers of color. Beneath the formal elegance of Evening Rendezvous, however, runs the subtle inflection of Lewis's lifelong political activism and humanitarian concerns. One of several paintings inspired by the Ku Klux Klan, the work alludes to the organization's clandestine activities."

I hope this information is helpful,
Joan of Art

Pictured: Norman Lewis, 1909–79, Evening Rendezvous, 1962, oil on linen, 50 1/4 x 64 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.