Benny Andrews

Born in Plainview, Georgia, Andrews earned a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958, and soon after moved to New York.

Andrews helped found the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, which agitated for greater representation of African-American artists and curators in New York’s major art museums in the late 1960s and 70s.

Andrews' father was a self-taught artist whose drawings and paintings led to renown as the "Dot Man" and a retrospective at the Morris Museum of Art.

[5] Education past the seventh grade was discouraged in the sharecropping community, but Andrews parents allowed him and his siblings to attend high school during the winter months.

[5] After graduating from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, Andrews moved to New York City in 1958, where he settled on the Lower East Side.

[6] He began working in the Christmas card division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to generate income for his young family.

[5] His work also steadily gained critical attention and was exhibited in several cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Paul Kessler gave Andrews his first solo show in 1960.

[7] In the same year, he painted one of his most notable works, No More Games, which highlighted the plight of black artists and became an icon of his emerging social justice activism in the art world.

[5] Then, from 1968 to 1997, he taught at Queens College, City University of New York in the SEEK program, which offered academic support for underserved students.

[5] This organization was composed of gang members who sought to combat youth violence and strengthen New York City's urban communities.

[10] Benny Andrews was a figural painter in the expressionist style who painted a diverse range of themes of suffering and injustice, including the Holocaust, Native American forced migrations, and Hurricane Katrina.

During the 1970s, he participated in a community art space called Communications Village operated by printmaker Benjamin Leroy Wigfall in Kingston, NY.

[7] Using various media, Andrews depicted diverse American scenes and people in a figurative style that he felt both reflected the dignity of those he portrayed and served his commitment to social change.