Richmond Barthé modeled The Boxer from memory, inspired by the famed Cuban featherweight Eligio Sardinas Montalvo, better known as “Kid Chocolate”—who, Barthé said, “moved like a ballet dancer.” Barthé, an African American sculptor who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, dedicated his artistic practice to emphasizing the expressive potential of the body’s physiognomy, pose, and movement. Here, the artist conveyed the boxer’s immense strength and agility 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; 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.
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