Untitled (Really Free!)
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Object Details
Artist/Maker
Nellie Mae Rowe, American, 1900–1982
Date
1967–1976
Medium
Marker and crayon on book page
Dimensions
Image/Sight: 7 1/2 x 5 inches (19.1 cm x 12.7 cm)
Framed/Mounted: 18 1/4 x 15 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches (46.4 cm x 38.7 cm x 3.2 cm)
Credit
Gift of Judith Alexander
Accession #
2002.239
Image Copyright
© Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Description
Rowe was a deeply spiritual person who believed that God had bestowed her with artistic abilities, saying, “This the talent that he gave me and I have to use it.” She hung onto the frontispiece of Really Free!, a pamphlet reproducing the Gospel according to John and printed by the Bible Society in 1967, transforming it with her elegant signature. The way that she envelopes the phrase “Really Free!” with her name makes this relatively simple work, which inspired the title of this exhibition, a bold statement about how she expressed her personal freedom through art in the final years of her life.