History of Painting

Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting is the catalogue for Marshall's 2018 exhibition of the same name at David Zwirner in London, a group of new paintings that engage with the history of the medium.

David Zwirner Books published it in 2019 as a 96-page hardcover with 35 colour reproductions, designed by Why Not Associates and printed by VeronaLibri in Verona. The paintings run from figurative to nonfigurative. They deal with art history, race and gender, and with how artworks are received in the world and in the art market. Essays by Teju Cole and Hal Foster read the layered works, including Untitled (Underpainting) (2018), alongside Marshall's own view of painting. Cole is an essayist, photographer and curator who wrote Open City. Foster is Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

Marshall was born in 1955 and works in painting, drawing and sculpture. Zwirner's text says his work addresses the absence of Black figures from the Western pictorial tradition and builds what he calls a "counter-archive" that puts them back into it.