Space Rhythms
Painted wire
41 5/8 x 17 1/4 x 22 inches (including base)
1960
Work on loan: Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama
As exhibited in:
Hayward Oubre: Structural Integrity, 2024, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama
Origins: the Historical Legacy of Visual Art at Winston-Salem State University, 2017–2018, Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Elevation from Within: The Study of Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 2019–2024, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2019; Richardson Family Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2021; Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 2022, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, 2023, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, 2024
Deeply attached to his Southern heritage, Hayward Louis Oubre, Jr. relied on childhood memories to create paintings and prints portraying African American life in his hometown of New Orleans. However, he is best remembered today for works that transcend any regionalist influences: airy wire sculptures that are celebrated for their resilience, strength, balance, and engineering mastery.
Oubre’s youthful artistic talent was encouraged in the New Orleans parochial schools he attended. Following high school, he enrolled at Dillard University, where he was a standout member of the football and track teams, an illustrator for the college newspaper, and the institution’s first art major. Upon his graduation in 1939, Oubre continued his studies at Atlanta University, thriving under the tutelage of painter Hale Woodruff and sculptor Nancy Prophet, who encouraged Oubre to submit his work to the annual Atlanta University exhibitions. In 1941, Oubre was assigned to help with a special art initiative at Tuskegee Institute, where he met George Washington Carver, an admirer of the fledgling artist’s work.
Following military service in World War II, Oubre used GI Bill benefits to earn a master’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1948. He then launched an extended career as an art educator at a series of HBCUs: Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (1948‒1949); Alabama State College (1949‒1965); and, finally, at Winston-Salem State University (1965‒1981), where he initiated the studio art program. Over three decades, Oubre mentored countless aspiring African American artists and embraced an “open studio concept” which allowed pupils to advance at their own pace. To provide his painting students with the proper learning material, Oubre conceived and copyrighted “a concise study of color mixing and color relationships” a color wheel that updated and expanded the 1810 color triangle developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Given his French surname and light complexion, Oubre was frequently mistaken as white—and occasionally encouraged to “pass” as Caucasian. The artist vehemently rejected such suggestions, saying “I am proud to be a black man. I want to be a black who is a damn accomplished man.”
Other works by this artist