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Working since the early 1960s, Melvin Edwards is a groundbreaking artist whose contributions to the history of African-American art and sculpture are renown. Born in 1937 in Houston, Texas, Edwards began his art career in Southern California, with a solo exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1965. Since then, his work has been widely exhibited and is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York;the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Edwards is best known for his sculptural series, Lynch Fragments, which span three periods: the early 1960s, when he responded to racial violence in American history; the early 1970s, when his activism concerning the Vietnam War motivated him to return to the series; and from 1978 to the present, when he began making Lynch Fragments to honor individuals, and to explore memory and his interest in African culture. This series displays the remarkable range of expression Edwards achieves with his method of welding found-objects into mask-like forms—including hammers, chains, and rail road spikes—and how, in the process, he renders violence, humor, and hope from these objects. His large-scale, public works, are prominently displayed throughout the United States. Edwards lives and works in New York, Plainfield, NJ, and Dakar, Senegal.
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