CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979) Awaiting His Return.

CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979)
Awaiting His Return.

Lithograph on wove paper, 1946. 405x344 mm; 16x12 1/4 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Proof, aside from the numbered edition of approximately 25. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the artist at El Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico City. A very good impression of this extremely scarce print.

We have not found another impression at auction in 20 years, and only two known impressions in The David C. Driskell Collection, University of Maryland, and Howard University Gallery of Art, Howard University, Washington, DC.

Provenance: Gift of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner.

Awaiting His Return was printed in Mexico in 1946 after Charles White finished his military service and the end of the war permitted a safe passage abroad. This print has been previously dated to 1943, presumably due to the wartime subject - an African-American woman seated near a banner of the Gold Star, a husband or son''s medal of bravery. White had made a less optimistic interpretation of this subject in 1946 in the pen and ink drawing, The Return of the Soldier, with three black G.I.s being roughed up by a menacing police officer and a klansman. In Mexico, White was influenced by a close working relationship with many of the great modern muralists and painters. While studying at the Escuela de Peintura y Scultura, "The Esmeralda", he lived in the same residence as David Siqueiros, and worked alongside Pablo O''Higgins and Diego Rivera at the Taller at the time. White had previously studied lithography under Harry Sternberg at the Artists Student League in New York during the first of his back-to-back Julius Rosenwald scholarships in 1942. A History of African-American Artists, Romare Bearden and Harry B. Henderson, Jr., p. 411, Gedeon Ea4.