Jack Whitten
Jack Whitten began his earliest experiments in painting during the 1960s by creating dynamic works inspired by Abstract Expressionism. Born and raised in Bessemer, Alabama, he moved to New York City in 1960 to attend The Cooper Union.
A retrospective on Whitten's 50-year career, "Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting," was organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California, and traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
His work has been exhibited in the 1969 and 1972 Whitney Annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and a landmark 1974 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Recently, Whitten's work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; 55th Venice Biennale, Italy; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Georgia; MoMA PS1, New York; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among others.
His work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; and the Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, Michigan, among others. Whitten received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute, California, in 2014.