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Victim of the City Streets #2

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Victim of the City Streets #2

Artist (1924 - 2001)
Date1946
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions40 × 20 in. (101.6 × 50.8 cm)
Framed: 47 3/4 × 27 1/2 × 2 3/4 in.
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, Gift of Merrill C. Berman and Dalia S. Berman, 2018.40
Signedl.r., in red paint: Biggers 46
Accession number 2018.40
On View
Not on view
Provenancethe Artist, Houston, TX, until 2001; to Hazel Hales Biggers (Artist’s wife), Houston, TX; to (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY); purchased by Merrill C. Berman, Scarsdale, NY, 2001; to (Alexandre Gallery, New York, NY); given to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2018
Label TextAgainst the background of a damaged brick building, the solitary figure in Victim of the City Streets #2 bows her head as she shuffles down the sidewalk. Her posture and tattered footwear, along with the stark setting and intense color palette, convey the bleak circumstances of urban life for some African Americans during the period. John Biggers depicted the struggles of those living in his community in order to call attention to racial and economic injustices.


Sobre el fondo compuesto por un edificio de ladrillos dañados, la figura solitaria de Víctima de las calles de la ciudad n.º 2 agacha la cabeza mientras avanza arrastrando los pies por la vereda. Su postura y sus zapatos harapientos, junto con el inhóspito entorno y la intensa paleta cromática, transmiten las circunstancias desoladoras de la vida urbana para algunos afroamericanos durante este periodo. John Biggers representó la lucha de aquellos que vivían en su comunidad para llamar la atención hacia las injusticias raciales y económicas.
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