An African American sculptor who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Richmond Barthé created compelling works that emphasize the expressive potential of the body’s physiognomy, pose, and movement. Barthé modeled The Boxer from memory, inspired by the famed Cuban featherweight “Kid Chocolate” of the 1930s. The muscular, yet lean and attenuated figure rests lightly on the balls of his feet, with his head tucked down and arm raised. The artist later recalled that the boxer “moved like a ballet dancer,” and this sculpture conveys the immense strength and surprising delicacy of that movement with lyricism and grace.
Margaret Rose Vendryes, Expression and Repression of Identity: Race, Religion, and Sexuality in the Art of American Sculptor Richmond Barthé (Ph.D. Diss, Princeton University, 1997), 379–87.
Susan F. Rossen et al., “African Americans in Art: Selections from the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999), 141, 184, 200–01, no. 11.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 139.
Jordana Moore Saggese, “Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art,” (University of California Press, 2014). (ill.).
New York, International Print Society, Sculpture by Richmond Barthé, Mar 26–Apr 14, 1945, cat. 8.
Los Angeles, Landau/Travelling Exhibitions, Two Sculptors, Two Eras: Richmond Barthé, Richard Hunt, no cat., p. 3; traveled to Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Jun 16–Aug 9, 1992; Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution, Anacostia Museum, Dec 20, 1992–Feb 28, 1993, Hampton, Virginia, Hampton University Museum, Apr 1–May 14, 1993, Chattanooga, Tenn., Hunter Museum of Art, Dec 5, 1993–Jan 30, 1994, Dallas, African American Museum, Feb 15–Apr 15, 1994, Lubbock, Museum of Texas Tech, c. May 1–Aug 14, 1994, New Orleans Museum of Art, Sep 1–Oct 31, 1994, Odessa, Art Institute of the Permian Basin, no dates, Columbus, Ohio, King Arts Complex, no dates, Monroe, Louisiana, Masur Museum of Art, c. Jan 1–c. Feb 28, 1995.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb 15–May 18, 2003, no cat.
Frank Breckenridge, Chicago, by 1948; The Art Institute of Chicago, 1948.
