Master Artist Otto Neals
July 1-11, 2015
Tabla Rasa Gallery
224 48 Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenues)
Brooklyn
(718) 833-9100
Wednesday, July 1, 2015, 6:30- 7:30 pm
Gallery Talk: An intimate conversation with master artist Otto Neals
Closing reception:
Saturday, July 11, 2015
2:00 – 4:00 pm
Gallery hours: 1:00 – 5:00 pm
THURSDAY, FRIDAY & SATURDAY
ABOUT Otto Neals
Born in 1930 in South Carolina, Otto Neals is a world renowned, highly gifted painter, sculptor, and printmaker. When he was a child, his family moved to New York where he still lives and works. A Brooklynite, Neals first studied commercial art at George Westinghouse Vocational High School. He also studied briefly at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and at other institutions in the borough. In 1951 he took a job with the post office’s art department. He eventually became the head illustrator at the Brooklyn General Post Office, creating illustrations and overseeing projects in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Long Island City.
Over decades, Neals emerged as one of the most respected visual artists in our lifetime. As a participant in the Black Arts movement he co-founded the historic Weusi Artist Collective and Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery in Harlem. In 1958 he took a lead role in establishing the Fulton Art Fair in Brooklyn. Neals has worked and exhibited with iconic masters, including Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, and Tom Feelings.
Neals’ work has been exhibited in distinguished institutions in the U.S. and abroad, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Columbia Museum of Art, the Huntsville Museum of Art and the Ghana National Museum. His work is in the collections of Congressman John Lewis, legendary jazz musician Randy Weston, Harry Belafonte, and Oprah Winfrey. The media has recognized Neals’ profound talent: he has been profiled in numerous outlets including The New York Times, EBONY magazine, Black Enterprise. You can read an article printed in 2011 in the NY Daily News.
Neals has won many awards and in 1995, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Alliance commissioned him to create a bronze sculpture based on the works of award-winning children’s book author Ezra Jack Keats. The work, Peter and Willie, is located in the “Imagination Playground” in Prospect Park. Mr. Neals was presented with the New York City Arts Commission’s Award for Excellence in Design for this work. Other commissions include 10 bronze plaques for the “Harlem Walk of Fame,” a bronze sculpture for the Brooklyn Children’s Center, a 20-foot mural for Kings County Hospital, and most recently a bronze portrait of the late Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton for City College of the City University of New York.
About his art, Neals says, “My talent as an artist comes directly from my ancestors. I am merely a receiver, an instrument for receiving some of the energies that permeate our entire universe and I give thanks for having been chosen to absorb those artistic forces.” Learn more at http://www.ottoneals.com/