Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art

Bringing focus to African-American art and its essential place in the history of American art.

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Avel de Knight

1923-1995

Works in the Collection

Avel deKnight, Rome: The Shore, Mixed media on paper, 1983.
Rome: The Shore
1983

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Avel deKnight, Interior: Casa Soprane, Molini di Triora, Italy, Watercolor on paper, 1988.
Interior: Casa Soprane, Molini di Triora, Italy
1988

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Black Profile with Colored Shawl
1973

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PFF102-Avel de Knight, The Rehearsal, Oil,1955. Three male figures in dance attire singing, one holding sheet music.
The Rehearsal
1955

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Biography

Avel de Knight was born in 1923 in New York City to parents who had immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados and Puerto Rico. De Knight studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1941 to 1942, and in 1943, he joined the U. S. Army, serving in a segregated unit until the end of WWII. In 1946 de Knight traveled to Paris where he joined the many other African American artists living and working in the city, such artists as Herb Gentry, Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney, and Ed Clark. While in France, de Knight used the G. I. Bill to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian.

In 1953 he participated in his first group exhibition at the Village Art Center in New York City and was awarded the Village Art Center Prize. Today his work can be found in the collections of The Schomberg Center, The Chrysler Museum of Art, Lehigh University Art Galleries, The Springfield Art Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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