Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1955 and as a child moved to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where he witnessed the height of the civil rights struggle. In the late 1970s, Marshall trained at the Otis Institute of Art in Los Angeles where he began to study art history. Early Renaissance painters, outsider artists, and modern artists who incorporated political critique into their art all influenced Marshall's work. In the early 1990s, he began making large scale paintings, which soon garnered international attention. In addition to painting, Marshall also works in sculpture, installation, photography, video, and comics. He lives in Chicago, where he served as Professor of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago for over a decade.