Norman Lewis was an African-American artist of Bermudian descent known for his incisive depictions of contemporary society and poetic abstractions.

“I wanted to be above criticism so that my work didn’t have to be discussed in terms of the fact that I’m black,” he once said.

He emerged as the sole Black artist in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists alongside Ad Reinhardt, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock. Though his paintings changed, Lewis remained committed to social concerns throughout his career, forming the ‘Spiral Group’ with Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, and Hale Woodruff, the group’s primary mission was to assist the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. Norman Lewis and the other members of The Spiral Group laid the groundwork for something better: an approach to art that is not only universal, but unifying.

Lewis’s work is held in major institutions including but not limited to The Studio Museum Harlem, The Smithsonian, The Whitney, and The Modern Museum of Art.

Title unknown (oil on canvas) 1947, Norman Lewis

Title Unknown (oil on canvas) c. 1960, by Norman Lewis