Felrath Hines

Felrath Hines worked to create universal visual idioms from a place of complex personal experience. Over the course of his career, his figurative and cubist-style morphed into soft-edged, organic abstract work as he experimented with hues in his chosen oil medium.

In the 1960s, there was a rise in the creation of artistic and social groups by and for African American artists due to a marginalization by galleries and museums. Hines, invited by fellow artist Romare Bearden, co-founded the art group Spiral, a space for African American visual artists to convene and dialogue in response to the civil rights movement. The group attended the March on Washington in 1963, and held their first and only group exhibit in 1965. Unconvinced that any artistic style or subject could be categorized exclusively as “black art,” Hines pursued his abstract sensibility. His social life, which included outings at jazz clubs and art openings, led Hines to meet Frank Neal. Neal would host luminaries such as James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Charles Sebree and Billy Strayhorn at his apartment to discuss creative and social issues, as well as their careers and place in a white-dominant world.

Hines was also known for his impeccable conservation work and accurate and sensitive in-painting, leading him to open a private conservation practice in 1964. His client list counted the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Georgia O’Keeffe, who would become a loyal friend. In 1972 he became Chief Conservator of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery then that of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, a job from which he retired in 1984. From that time to his death in 1993, he produced more paintings than during the rest of his career combined.

Submitted by Spanierman Modern