Untitled (Standing Woman), c.1933-1935 (terracotta, painted pale tan)

This terracotta figure of a woman was created by the San Francisco–based African American artist Sargent Johnson in the 1930s, when black artists were deriving powerful inspiration from the New Negro Movement and its leader Alain Locke. Locke’s particular encouragement of art that celebrated black physical types and African ancestral traditions led Johnson to refer to African sculpture in the masklike form of the face. Employing a modernist reduction of form in the simplified, cylindrical body, Johnson created a work that exudes a quiet gravity and power.