Announcing Representation of Reginald Madison
Photo Credit: Pete Mauney
Reginald Madison-Chicago-Art & Soul-Third Place Prize-1968-PhotoCredit: Ann Zelle
Uffner & Liu is pleased to announce the representation Hudson-based artist Reginald Madison (b. 1941, Chicago, IL) following the artist's debut solo exhibition in New York at the gallery last year.
Born in 1941 in Chicago, Madison came to prominence in the emergent art scene of the Black Arts Movement (1965 – 1975). His story is one of self-determination and relentless passion, and at 84 years old is still clear-eyed and zealous about what’s to come. He is fully self-taught, having discovered a discarded box of paints as a teenager and started putting them to use. He later worked at the US Steel Southworks, taking on extra shifts to save up money to take his young family to Europe for a year, where he visited the museums of Paris, Munich, and Madrid.
In 1968 he had his first public showing of his artwork, at "Art & Soul" in Chicago, where he won third place in a competition juried by artist Richard Hunt and curator Jan van der Marck, founding director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. This formative exhibition experience gave him the confidence to further pursue his artmaking, and he traveled east to New York City and then western Massachusetts, before finally being drawn to Hudson, where he currently lives and works.
Reginald Madison River Blue, 2006-2024 oil on canvas 90 3/4 x 77 1/2 x 2 1/2 in (230.5 x 196.8 x 6.3 cm)
Madison's paintings are vibrant and improvisational, just like the free form jazz that he grew up listening to and that his method is so deeply rooted in. He has perfected a palette that embraces bold color (lime greens, salmon pinks, bright blues), toned down to an earthy—and always matte, he abhors sheen—hue. Texture is achieved through an assortment of mark-making materials, from rags to the palms of his hands to his collection of brushes. He mixes his colors directly on the walls of his studio. In a 2011 interview, he quips: “If you say ‘what’s your ancestry?’, I say – Charlie Parker. That’s my ancestor.”
Reginald Madison Black Magic, 2024 oil and tar on panel 24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm)
Reginald Madison (b. 1941, Chicago, IL) is a self taught painter and sculptor who emerged from the Black Arts Movement in Chicago (1965 -1975). He studied independently in Paris, Venice, and Copenhagen in the 60’s. After moving to Western Massachusetts in the 70’s, Madison was represented by Phyllis Kind Gallery. After decades of working in relative obscurity, Madison held a solo exhibition at SEPTEMBER Gallery in Hudson, NY in 2021, shortly followed by his first New York solo exhibition at Rachel Uffner Gallery in 2024. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY (2025, 2022); False Flag Gallery, Long Island City, NY (2021); SEPTEMBER Gallery, Hudson, NY (2021); The Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL (2018); and Shelnutt Gallery, Troy, NY (2018) and the historic pop up exhibition, Art and Soul, juried by Richard Hunt (1970). Madison’s work is in the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Miami, FL; and the University of Santa Barbara Art, Design & Architecture Museum, Santa Barbara, CA. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, and has been included in “Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975”, Duke University Press, and “The Time Is Now! Art World’s of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980”, The University of Chicago Press. Madison lives and works in Hudson, NY.
For more information about this announcement and others at Uffner & Liu, please visit their site here. Information about this artist and other artists, along with past, current, and future exhibitions, can be found on the website. The gallery can be found on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X.
