Art Basel Miami Beach | Herbert Gentry: The Gesture of Jazz

RYAN LEE Gallery is pleased to present landmark paintings by Herbert Gentry (b. 1919 Pittsburgh, PA – d. 2003 Stockholm, Sweden) at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. The paintings on view are the cumulation of an international life that was marked at its half-way point by a retrospective at the Royal Academy (Kungliga Akademien) in Stockholm, Sweden in 1976 — the first time the museum honored a non-Scandinavian artist. Many of the paintings shown here were exhibited at this important presentation of Gentry’s work.

Herbert Gentry, The Gesture of Jazz (Booth S8), installed at Art Basel Miami Beach, 2024

Le Jardin, 1959-1960

Oil on canvas

47 x 39 inches (119.4 x 99.1 cm)

Framed Dimensions: 49 3/8 x 41 3/8 inches (125.4 x 105.1 cm)

I was brought up in Harlem. When I grew up there, Harlem prepared you for a city like Paris. In Harlem, we liked people from the whole world, and the first place artists from the whole world wanted to visit was Harlem. Foreign languages were not strange to us nor were different types of people.

— Herbert Gentry

Raised by a dancer and Ziegfeld girl who performed with the likes of Josephine Baker, Gentry was steeped in a culture of creative bohemia from a young age, and lived out this ethos for the rest of his life. He was drafted in the segregated US forces, and was one of the first to return to Paris on the GI Bill in 1946.

Gentry in front of the Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris, c. 1945.

In Paris, Gentry studied under Georges Braque. There, scholar Rashida K. Braggs writes, “fueled by a jazz spirit, Herbert Gentry instinctually connected with others, merging Harlem’s salon culture with Parisian café culture.” While it was hard for Americans to show in Paris, he exhibited with Galerie Seine (1949) and Galerie Huit (1950). In 1949, Gentry opened a popular gallery-jazz club in the French capital, Chez Honey. This café-club became a significant gathering space not only for expatriated American artists such as Beauford Delaney and Romare Bearden, but also eminent musicians such as Eartha Kitt, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.

[From left to right] Herbert Gentry with friends at Paris's Cité Universitaire, 1946; standing in a breadline with fellow artists in Paris, c. 1946; in Montparnasse, 1949.

While in Paris, Gentry became involved with the flourishing CoBrA movement. He was invited to exhibit in Copenhagen, where he lived for five years before moving to Stockholm. Following this move, gestural abstraction became his primary style, and his career thrived in Denmark and Sweden, where he became very involved in underground jazz scenes.

Herbert Gentry, 20-year Retrospective, installed at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, 1976

Gentry's 20-year retrospective, installed at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, 1976.

Gentry’s deepening interest in abstraction and constant jazz influence was reflected by overlapping forms, fused by line and color, which are diligently organized by an inner sense of rhythm that both provide structure to and emanate from Gentry’s paintings. Figures, reminiscent of Picasso’s revolutionary abstractions and the so-called “primitive” western African masks that inspired him, organically came together in Gentry’s maze of lines and bright colors. Gentry’s paintings reclaimed the African influences that his white peers and predecessors used in their work, while seeking a universality that connected with viewers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ed Clark, Herbert Gentry, and Jacob Lawrence in Chelsea, c. 1990.

Throughout his life in France, Denmark, Sweden, and later, New York, Gentry gathered people around him. He acted as a connector, a mentor, and a friend to many American and European artists. He was closely associated with leading African American artists such as Beauford Delaney, Ed Clark, Jacob Lawrence, and Bill Hutson, among others.

Gentry absorbed diverse artistic influences, from the improvisation of the New York School of painters to the symbolism of European Surrealism and gesture of Art Informel. His works are a convergence of these styles from both continents, creating his own approach that was universal and distinctive.

Herbert Gentry’s work has recently been acquired by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Saint Louis Art Museum, MO; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, among others. His work can be found in 50+ collections worldwide. This is Gentry’s first time being shown at Art Basel Miami Beach.