Robert Colescott Print: "Whirl Champ" (1997)

Robert Colescott
Whirl Champ, 1997
Lithograph on Arches
30 x 22 1/4 inches 
76.2 x 56.5 centimeters
Edition of 40, 6TP

Robert Colescott worked in a number of mediums throughout his long career, including a variety of print techniques from serigraphy and lithography to woodcuts and etchings. Five editions made from 1989 to 1997 are featured in the gallery’s Colescott Print Shop. 

Printed by master printmaker Marina Ancona at Hand Graphics in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I Can’t Dance (1996), Whirl Champ (1997), and Local Color (1997) explore racial stereotypes from multiple points of view. I Can’t Dance and Whirl Champ challenge the old trope that all Black people are inherently good dancers, while Local Color satirizes the phrase “local color” in a scene depicting a white male farmer in a covert sexual encounter with a Black woman. Editions from I Can’t Dance and Local Color are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. A portion of the I Can’t Dance edition of 70 was included in Resounding Heart, an eight-print colophon published in 1996 by Hand Graphics featuring Black artists Ron Adams, John Biggers, Tarleton Blackwell, Artis Lane, Lionel Lofton, John T. Scott, and Renée Stout, in addition to Colescott.

These prints are signed and come directly from The Estate of Robert H. Colescott. All prints are unframed.