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Untitled (AM-FAM), 2024
8-run screenprint
Image size: 21-1/2 x 33-5/8 inches
Paper size: 31-1/2 x 41-3/4 inches
Edition: 55
Rico Gatson (b. 1966, Augusta, GA) is a Brooklyn-based artist whose sculpture, painting, video, and public art projects explore themes of history, identity, popular culture, and spirituality. For over two decades, Rico Gatson has been cele¬brated for his vibrant, colorful, and layered artworks. Inspired by significant moments in African American history and politics, his oeuvre includes images of protests, longstanding injustices, and dynamic abstract geometries that celebrate Pan-Africanist aesthetics and Black cultural and political figures.
Gatson’s recent collaboration with Graphicstudio, Untitled (AM-FAM), is an intricate eight-run screenprint. The central image was derived from a quarter-plate ambrotype in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress. This evocative background, dated between 1863 and 1865, features an unidentified African American soldier wearing a Union uniform with his wife and two daughters. Overlaying this historical portrait is a striking screenprinted flag, originally featured in Gatson’s renowned “Flag Paintings,” representing a more inclusive vision of the American flag. Using screenprinting, Gatson achieved highly saturated and flat colors paired with razor-sharp geometry complimenting the structure and vibrant color of the original flag painting.
