Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Untitled (Orange Dog and Blue-Coated Person)


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Object Details


Artist/Maker

Nellie Mae Rowe, American, 1900–1982

Date

1980

Medium

Crayon and pencil on paper

Dimensions

32 x 36 inches

Credit

Gift of Judith Alexander

Accession #

2003.223

Image Copyright

© Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Description

By the time she made this work, Rowe had developed a sophisticated mastery of color and compositional structure. She gained access to very large paper through Judith Alexander, the Atlanta gallerist who began representing Rowe in 1978 and who gave the High the vast majority of its Rowe collection. The dapper blue figure seems to coax the parade of converging dreamlike forms in this drawing, including a sphinxlike yellow creature who follows the central, orange-bodied dog carrying a turban-wearing figure on his back.