Artist Birthday: Alvin Loving, Jr

Alvin Loving, Jr, was from the generation of African American artists who succeeded the Harlem Renaissance artists of the 1920s and 1930s. His generation struggled with questions of what subject matter was most meaningful for Black artists.

Artist Birthday for 19 September: Alvin Loving, Jr (1935-2005, US)

Alvin Loving, Jr, Mara C, 2003, color offset lithograph on paper, 70.8 x 54.6 cm Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist (PMA-4193)

Loving is a member of a generation of African American artists who prefer abstraction as a means of expression. All the while, he interweaves his family history into his work. Despite the tradition of Spiral advocating that Black artists should be free to express their aesthetic, in the late 1960s and early 1970s—in the light of the Civil Rights Movement—African American artists were under pressure to represent a uniquely Black point of view. Loving chose abstraction, and turned to personal imagery to achieve that. Loving integrated circles and spirals into his works as a nod to his African roots and the importance of vibrant pattern in African arts, and as an expression of growth and continued life. His heavy employment of spirals began in the 1980s. It was a symbol Loving learned was essential in Afro-Caribbean religious traditions, like Santeria, while on a trip to Cuba. Before spirals Loving was obsessed with the cube, a stretched out series of which also appears in this lithograph. The Mara C  title refers to the late artist’s wife. He did several lithographs during this period employing her name in the title.

Background

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s galvanized Black artists to push for a revival in the exhibition and study of African American art that had stagnated since the Harlem Renaissance (ca. 1918-1930s). This led to the formation of the Spiral Group in New York in 1963. Artists active during the Harlem Renaissance as well as younger artists joined and the styles ranged from Abstract Expressionism to Social Realism. As during the Harlem Renaissance, some of the artists felt that the group’s art should be relevant to the African American community, with scenes of everyday life and elements of their African ancestry. Others believed that style was a means to an end, and that any style, regardless of its “Blackness” could represent modern African American art as a significant contribution to contemporary American art. Alan Loving, Jr chose abstraction.

Born in Detroit, Alvin Loving Jr received BAs and MFAs in fine art from the University of Illinois (1963) and University of Michigan . Loving’s father was an educator and, ultimately, college dean, and his mother and grandmother were quilters. He was very influenced by his mother’s and grandmother’s work, watching them quilting as a child. In 1968, Loving relocated to New York, where he found himself among a social milieu which included artists Robert Duran, Alan Shields, Howardena Pindell, Richard Van Buren, and the dancer and choreographer Batya Zamir. A year later, in 1969, Loving famously became the first African-American to have a one-person show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.