Alonzo Davis, a champion of Black art in the United States, passed away on January 27th at 82. His death was confirmed by his representing gallery in Los Angeles, Parrasch Heijnen.
Often inspired by his travels worldwide, Davis created prints, paintings, and installations in his art practice. His pieces frequently addressed social justice and environmental issues. However, he is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles, one of the first major Black-owned contemporary art galleries in the United States.
Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1942, Davis moved to L.A. with his mother and brother, the artist Dale Brockman Davis. There, Davis earned a BA from Pepperdine University in 1964 and an MFA in printmaking from Otis Art Institute in 1971. During this time, Davis’s experiences during the civil rights movement, particularly his participation in the James Meredith March in 1966, profoundly shaped his personal beliefs.
In 1967, he founded the Brockman Gallery with his brother, in a storefront in Leimert Park, then a cultural hub for the Black community in South Los Angeles. The gallery became an important platform for Black artists, providing critical exposure and support at a time when such opportunities were scarce. Artists like David Hammons, Suzanne Jackson, Betye Saar, and Kerry James Marshall were among those who had early exhibitions at Brockman Gallery.
Throughout his career, Davis was a strong advocate for public art. He contributed to a series of public murals for the 1984 Summer Olympics, including his own work, Eye on ’84 (1984). This mural was one of ten commissioned for the event, but it was painted over.
The scope of Brockman Gallery expanded over the years to include a nonprofit arm, Brockman Productions, which hosted an artist-in-residence program and an annual film festival. Davis stepped back from active gallery management in 1987 before the gallery closed in 1990.
In his later years, Davis remained committed to art education. Just before the gallery closed, Davis became the interim director of the public art program in Sacramento. He taught at the San Antonio Art Institute before becoming the dean of the Memphis College of Art from 1993 to 2002. In 1995, Davis was granted a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). At his initiative, the VCCA introduced the Alonzo Davis Fellowship in 2007.
Parrasch Heijnen hosted Davis’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in 2022, featuring the artist’s “Blanket Series,” made of woven, painted strips of paper and canvas. Davis’s work is featured in prestigious collections, including the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
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