As a painter and printmaker, Emma Amos used a combination of bold colors, words, and textiles to create dynamic figurative works. In addition to her independent practice, Amos was a member of the historic African American artist collective Spiral Group, and was also one of the anonymous feminists behind the Guerrilla Girls. In 2018, her painting Flower Sniffer (1966) was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum. Around the same time, her work was featured in two important traveling exhibitions that highlighted revolutionary Black art, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” and “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85.”
Amos foresaw that her due recognition would come late. In a 1995 interview with bell hooks, the artist said of gaining art-world acclaim: “It’s not going to be me, or, if so, it’s going to be a late splurge on the order of what happened to Alice [Neel], Elizabeth Catlett, or Faith Ringgold.” Amos is featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2020.