26 Facts About Jack Whitten

Jack Whitten was an American abstract painter and sculptor, who was part of the Black Abstractionism canon.

Jack Whitten was born December 5,1939 in Bessemer, Alabama, to Mose Whitten and Annie B Cunningham.

Jack Whitten's father was a coal miner who died when he was eight years old.

Jack Whitten's mother was a seamstress who eventually founded a private kindergarten.

Jack Whitten inherited Cross' tools, and as a teenager, he worked painting price tags for local stores.

Jack Whitten joined the ROTC, like his older brother, and used the money that he earned from painting store tags to support himself through college.

In 1960, Jack Whitten went to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to begin studying art and became involved in Civil Rights demonstrations there.

Jack Whitten enrolled at Cooper Union in the fall of 1960, and was the only Black student in his class.

Jack Whitten met his future Mary Staikos, a fellow art student, during his time at Cooper Union.

Jack Whitten graduated with a bachelor's degree in fine art in 1964.

Shortly after leaving Cooper Union, Jack Whitten had the opportunity to meet other Black artists, including Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis, while he remained in New York to start his art career.

In 1964, Jack Whitten completed his first formal series of paintings after university, his Heads series, an exploration of the possibilities of overlap between painting and photography.

Much of Jack Whitten's artwork was inspired by his experiences during the Civil Rights Movement.

Jack Whitten concluded that slavery obstructed the culture of people of color, and believed that it was his destiny to restore the culture through his pieces.

Jack Whitten used a T-shaped tool, which he called the "developer".

Jack Whitten would move the tool across the surface of his art in one single motion.

In 1969, Jack Whitten began traveling annually to the Greek island of Crete with Staikos, a Greek-American.

Jack Whitten eventually acquired a studio on the island which he used for his sculpture practice.

Jack Whitten's work was featured in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972.

Jack Whitten has had individual shows at numerous museums, galleries, and universities, including a 10-year retrospective in 1983 at the Studio Museum in Harlem and an exhibition of memorial paintings in 2008 at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

From 1974 to 1995, Jack Whitten was a professor of painting at Cooper Union, his alma mater.

In 1974, Jack Whitten participated in a residency at the Xerox corporation, giving him access to the then-new technology required for xerography printing.

Jack Whitten married Florence Squires in the early 1960s and divorced soon after.

Jack Whitten remarried to Mary Staikos in 1968, whom he had met as a student at Cooper Union.

Jack Whitten had two children from his two marriages, both girls.

Jack Whitten died in Manhattan at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on January 20,2018, at age 78 of complications from leukemia.