Artist Betye Saar, whose work reflects Black identity, dies at 99

Artist Betye Saar, whose work reflects Black identity, culture and spirituality, died Sunday morning in Los Angeles at 99.Saar's death was confirmed Monday by relatives. She would have turned 100 this week.A central figure of the 1960s Black Art Movement, Saar pioneered assemblage boxes, or sculptures made of found objects, and reclaimed Jim Crow-era memorabilia as powerful totems of Black liberation.“Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists,” according to Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represents her.Saar began her career in design and shifted to art at age 35. She continued to make art into her 90s.

She grew up in Pasadena and was part of a community of Black artists in nearby Altadena; she often cited Simon Rodia's Watts Towers as an early source of inspiration.Saar’s practice incorporated painting, printmaking, sculpture and found objects including dolls, washboards and other antiques. Boats, clocks, cages and altars recur in her practice, as well as symbols of the occult and cosmology. She often referenced her astrological sign of Leo in the form of lions, punctuating many works.“Her appropriation of Black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion,” the gallery said.

“Among the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach.”Made in 1969, “Black Girl’s Window,” was groundbreaking. Still, it wasn't widely celebrated until decades later, and it was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2019. “There weren’t that many galleries in Los Angeles at the time and there certainly weren’t any for Black artists,” she once said in an interview.“The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” created in 1972, is one of her most important works.

It features memorabilia she collected that denigrated Black people, included a “mammy,” or 19th century minstrel character who smiled while serving white slave owners.In Saar's hands though, the figure is reclaimed: She smiles, but holds a rifle and has a hand grenade.It came in response to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Saar said King's death “triggered a rage within me, and the mystic transformed into the warrior.”“I had a lot of hesitation about using po…