HAYWARD OUBRE: Structural Integrity

This ground-breaking volume is the first book devoted to the life and work of Hayward Oubre, and brings together important examples of Oubre’s sculptures, paintings, and prints to explore his career, creative process, and legacy. Best known for his wire sculptures, Hayward L. Oubre, Jr. (1916–2006), was an important Black American artist and educator, who has until now received little attention from scholars and museums. He created sculptures, paintings, and prints that tested the bounds of each of these mediums. These works share a previously untold history of American modernism rooted in the South. Academically-trained, Oubre worked with an everyday material—wire coat hangers—that led some early critics to associate his sculpture with folk art, despite wire rising to prominence as a material for modernist sculptors in this period. While making his art he also trained a subsequent generation of artists through his teaching, first at Alabama State College (now Alabama State University)