Alonzo Davis

Mar 6

Alonzo Davis’ (b. 1942, Tuskegee, AL. d. 2025, Largo, MD) six-decade-long career explored a wide range of media and methods, from mural to print, painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. Using self-referential iconography, Davis often employed arrows, the direction indicating a path or trajectory, reflecting a philosophical interest in direction, be it political and societal, personal, or cosmic. Davis’ works are a reclamation of identity, using Blackness, Egyptian imagery, African imagery, and Indigenous motifs.

As co-founder of the seminal Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles, the first major Black-owned contemporary art gallery in the United States (1967-1990), Davis, along with his brother Dale Brockman Davis, championed Black and minority artists in a time when white, male art was prevalent.

Davis’ iconic highway mural Eye on ’84, created for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics is currently featured in the Hammer biennial, “Made in L.A. 2025”, on view through March 1, 2026. His work is also currently included in Act on It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Lancaster Museum of Art and History; Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; and California State University, Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery.

Davis was featured in the landmark exhibition Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2011-2012), Traveled to:

MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012-2013), and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (2013); Eleven from California, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (1972); Synthesis, JAM (Just Above Midtown), New York, NY (1974); and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1994).

Alonzo Davis received a BA from Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, CA (1964), a BFA (1971) and MFA (1973) from Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, CA. Select solo exhibitions include Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York (1975); Modern Nordisk Konst, Göteborg, Sweden (1979); and Watts Tower Arts Center, Los Angeles, CA (1981).

Davis’ work is held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO.

Remembering Alonzo Davis

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