In large-scale portraits that bring together mortals, gods, monsters and machines, Harlem-based artist Robert Pruitt considers the complexity of Black identities. His charcoal, pastel, and conté drawings achieve a realism that is complicated by the ahistorical, fantastical, and cross-cultural styles of his subjects. Assembling references from science fiction, comics, hip hop, and African art, Pruitt dresses his figures in clothing and hairstyles that aren't easily categorised, preventing any straight read by the viewer. Drawing on the aesthetics and philosophies of Afrofuturism and the cultural history of the African diaspora, his work attempts to connect the breadth of Black experience to offer a sense of commonality and humanity he finds lacking in many forms of Black representation. Pruitt also works in sculpture, animation, and photography, and during a 2014 residency at the Tamarind Institute, he further explored figuration with a series of lithographs.
Read MoreBorn in 1975 in Houston, Pruitt received his BFA from Texas Southern University (2000) and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin (2003). His many solo exhibitions include Guest Minister at Oxbow, Seattle (2020); The Banner Project: Robert Pruitt at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2019); Devotion at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2018); and Women at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2013). Among group exhibitions, he participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and is currently featured in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration at the Mississippi Art Museum (traveling to Baltimore Museum of Art (2022) . His work resides in such public collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Portland Museum of Art; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, among others. A founding member of the Houston artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, he has received awards from Artadia, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
