Kerry James Marshall Trivia Questions

Marshall's work is predominantly figurative, featuring Black figures in everyday and historical scenes. He uses abstraction sparingly, but his oeuvre is not exclusively abstract.

Marshall was born on October 17, 1955, in Birmingham, Alabama, and later moved with his family to Los Angeles in the 1960s.

Marshall is known for painting Black figures with very dark skin to challenge absence in art history, but his palette includes lighter tones. The claim of exclusive pitch-black skin is too absolute and inaccurate.

In 2019, 'Past Times' (1997) fetched $21.1 million at auction, shattering previous records for a living African American artist.

His first major retrospective was at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2016, not MoMA. It later traveled to the Met Breuer.

Marshall studied at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, not Yale.

He created 'Rythm Mastr', which reimagines African American heroes using West African sculpture and comic book style, not Spider-Man.

Marshall received the MacArthur 'Genius Grant' in 1997, recognizing his innovative figurative paintings that center Black identity and history.

That portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley. Marshall has never painted a U.S. presidential portrait, though he is a renowned contemporary artist.

Marshall earned a BFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1978 and later studied at the University of California, Irvine, not the Royal Academy.

His 'Garden Project' series, depicting public housing residents with dignity, was featured in the U.S. Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale.

The painting features a clock stopped at 10:22, the time of the Birmingham church bombing on September 15, 1963.

His first major retrospective, 'Kerry James Marshall: Mastry', opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2016, then traveled to other venues, not MoMA.

The painting sold at Sotheby's in May 2018 for $21.1 million, the highest price ever achieved at auction for a work by a living Black artist at that time.

Marshall painted murals for Chicago’s public housing projects, not Birmingham. He was raised in South Central Los Angeles and later moved to Chicago.

Marshall's 'Rythm Mastr' (debuted 1999) blends African mythology and superhero tropes to explore African American folklore and history, originally serialized in newspapers.