Melvin Edwards, Lynch Fragment Landscape, 1963-64

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Dia Beacon, NY (2022); deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2022); Public Art Fund, City Hall Park, New York, NY (2021); Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (2019); and Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil (2018), among others. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including New York: 1962–1964, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY (2022); The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2021), traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2021); Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2017), traveled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK (2018), Brooklyn Museum, NY (2018), The Broad, Los Angeles, CA (2019), de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA (2019), and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2020); Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic 1945–1965, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2016); and the 56th Venice Biennale: All the World’s Futures, Italy (2015). Edwards’s work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Dia Art Foundation, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. Edwards taught at Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, from 1972 to 2002. In 2014, he received an honorary doctorate from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. Edwards is also represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin and New York.

Melvin Edwards (b.1937) is a pioneer in the history of contemporary African American art and sculpture. Born in Houston, Texas, he began his artistic career at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, where he met and was mentored by the Hungarian painter Francis de Erdely. In 1965, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA organized his first solo exhibition, which launched his professional career. Edwards moved to New York City in 1967. Shortly after his arrival, his work was exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem and in 1970, he became the first African American sculptor to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Edwards’s work is the subject of the 2024 survey Some Bright Morning, presented by the Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany; this exhibition will travel to Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France in 2025 and 2026.

Other major retrospectives of his work include Melvin Edwards: Five Decades, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX (2015), traveled to Zimmerli Museum of Art, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ (2015) and to Columbus Museum of Art, OH (2016), and Melvin Edwards Sculpture: A Thirty-Year Retrospective 1963–1993, Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York at Purchase (1993), traveled to The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami (1994), Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1994), and to McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (1995).

[Alexander Gray Associates]