Melvin Edwards is Awarded United States Artists Fellowship 2020
We are delighted to congratulate Melvin Edwards on receiving the coveted United States Artists Fellowship. The US Artists Fellowship 2020 has been awarded to fifty artists working across ten creative disciplines, each of whom will receive $50,000 unrestricted grant.
Melvin Edwards was born in 1937 in Houston, USA, and lives and works just outside New York, USA and Dakar, Senegal. Edwards is recognised as a pioneer in contemporary African-American art and sculpture. He is best known for his sculptural series ‘Lynch Fragments' that spans three periods: the 1960s, when he responded to racial violence; the early 1970s, when the Vietnam War motivated him to return to the series; and from 1978 to the present he began using ‘Lynch Fragments' as a vehicle to honour individuals, explore nostalgia, and to investigate African culture. This series exemplifies the extraordinary range of expression Edwards achieves by welding together industrial found-objects; including hammers, chains and rail road spikes-into new forms, provoking subjects such as violence, humour and hope.
