Obituary for Melvin Edwards: Black sculptor from the USA

Lynchen, the murderous vigilante justice carried out by an American vigilante group or a wild mob, with particularly high numbers of cases between the 1880s and the 1940s, with far more black victims than white ones: sometimes one came across the brutal theme quite unexpectedly in the elegant galleries of art exhibitions.

Not that the well-known pictures were hanging there: black people hanging from a tree, a jeering white audience. It was more subtle: metal sculptures that at first glance looked like classic abstract art and only at second glance like the welded together remains of torture instruments. Then you read the title: “Lynch Fragments.” Artist Name: Melvin Edwards.

You could occasionally read the name on German gallery and exhibition walls, for example in the winter a year ago in Kassel, where they once showed Edward’s wide range of work in a solo exhibition. Her title “One Bright Morning” sounded idyllic – and came from a death threat to a black southern family. This large, late retrospective then traveled through Europe, where the sculptor, who was born in Texas in 1937, had previously only been encountered in group exhibitions. Most recently, in the fall, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris showed the big show full of large constructions that brought to mind agricultural equipment – and devices to prevent people from escaping.

Edwards didn’t want to see why, as a black man, he shouldn’t work in the field of abstraction

At the same time, this Melvin Edwards effect was even more effective in the large minimalism exhibition at the Pinault Collection: between all the laconic, pure formal art pieces of the white minimal art elite from Europe and the USA, there hung a steel curtain by Edwards, delicate like a fragile fabric, but made of barbed wire and chains, dedicated to two black artist friends. The chains represented slavery and its consequences. But not only. When you get stuck in your car, they quoted him as saying New York Timesyou’ll be happy if the towing service has some with you.

Edwards didn’t want to see why, as a black artist, he shouldn’t work in the field of abstraction, which is considered traditionally white in the USA. He traveled intensively to African countries, also to study the art from there. In the end, he became an influential role model for younger people. Now Melvin Edwards has died in Baltimore at the age of 88.