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Daniel LaRue Johnson (1938–2017) was an American abstract sculptor, painter, and printmaker.

Early life and education

Daniel LaRue Johnson was born in 1938 in Los Angeles. While in high school, he met painter Virginia Jaramillo. Johnson staged his first solo art exhibition in 1953 at a community center in Pasadena. He took classes with Jaramillo at the Otis Art Institute, and the couple married in 1960. Johnson then attended the Chouinard Art Institute in the early 1960s.

Life and career

Johnson attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 and traveled throughout the American South for several months afterwards. During his travels he scavenged materials to use in his artwork, including protest buttons, a mousetrap, and broken dolls. Many of his works from this period comprise assemblages of found objects that Johnson painted black, which reference the Civil Rights Movement and racial violence in the United States.

In 1965, Johnson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He used the funds to travel to Paris with his wife Jaramillo, and studied there for a year under sculptor Alberto Giacometti. They returned to New York following the year of study. After moving back to the United States, Johnson began to work primarily in abstract painting and minimalist sculpture.

In 1969, Johnson and Jaramillo moved into a 5000 square foot loft in New York's SoHo neighborhood. The same year, Johnson participated in Frank Bowling's exhibition 5+1 at SUNY Stony Brook featuring work by black abstract artists. Johnson showed a thin, elongated pyramidal sculpture painted with vertical stripes of various colors.

Johnson was a longtime friend of political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche, who had attended high school with Johnson's father and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. After Bunch's death in 1971, Johnson was commissioned to create a sculpture in his memory, permanently installed in New York's Ralph Bunche Park in 1980. The abstract steel sculpture is a 50-foot tall, thin pyramid form with several rectangular cut-outs at its base; the work faces the headquarters of the United Nations, which Bunche had helped form and lead for several decades.

In the early 2010s, Johnson and Jaramillo left their longtime SoHo loft and relocated to Long Island, moving to a house in Hampton Bays.

Personal life

Johnson married painter Virginia Jaramillo in 1960 after the two met in high school. Johnson died in 2017.

Notable works in public collections

• Untitled (1961), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Freedom Now, Number 1 (1963–1964), Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Untitled (1964), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Nations (1976), Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
• Lines and Colors (date unknown), Cleveland Museum of Art

Citations and references

1. ^ "Daniel LaRue Johnson (1938–2017)". Artforum. 13 July 2017. OCLC 20458258. Archived from the original on 27 September 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
2. ^ London, Carey (8 February 2016). "Getting Creative With At-Home Artist Studios". 27 East. Southampton Press. Archived from the original on 27 March 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
3. ^ Hanson, Sarah P.; Pobric, Pac (13 July 2017). "Pioneering American artist Daniel LaRue Johnson dies". The Art Newspaper. OCLC 23658809. Archived from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
4. ^ Loos, Ted (25 September 2020). "A Painter Who Puts It All on the Line". The New York Times. OCLC 1645522. Archived from the original on 25 September 2020. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
5. ^ Cotter, Holland (18 February 2021). "Black Grief, White Grievance: Artists Search for Racial Justice". The New York Times. OCLC 1645522. Archived from the original on 18 February 2021. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
6. ^ Liu, Jasmine (March 2023). "'Revisiting 5+1'". Art in America. Vol. 111, no. 2. p. 91. OCLC 1121298647. Archived from the original on 13 October 2024.
7. "Ralph Bunche Park Monument". New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Archived from the original on 17 January 2024. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
8. "Untitled". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 7 November 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
9. "Freedom Now, Number 1". Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 25 November 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
10. "Untitled". Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 5 March 2024. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
11. "Nations". Studio Museum in Harlem. Archived from the original on 2 November 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
12. "Lines and Colors". Cleveland Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 27 December 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2025.

• 1938 births
• 2017 deaths
• 20th-century African-American artists
• 20th-century American male artists
• 20th-century American painters
• 21st-century African-American artists
• 21st-century American painters
• American male painters
• American male sculptors
• 21st-century American sculptors
• Artists from Los Angeles
• Chouinard Art Institute alumni