Frank Wimberley (1926–2025)

Campbell is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Frank Wimberley, a beloved figure in the art world. As a key figure in African American art and a leading contemporary artist in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Wimberley never lost his passion for experimentation and inquiry. The spontaneity of his process was akin to jazz—an important part of his life and a recurring theme in his art—but his method was unfailingly deliberate. As the art historian Phyllis Braff noted, “Wimberley has been coaxing expressive content from art’s key components: invented form and space; color and its vibrations; pigment and its viscosity, brush action and its gestural rhythms.” 

 

In 1969, when few African American artists were invited to exhibit their work, Wimberley was included in a group exhibition at CW Post College, in Brookville, New York. However, in the next decade, he participated in shows, often including The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York (1971), and the Penthouse Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1972). His first solo exhibitions were in 1973 at The Black History Museum, Hempstead, New York (now the African American Museum of Nassau County), which opened in 1970, and at Acts of Art Gallery in downtown New York. In 1974, Wimberley had solo shows at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and again at Acts of Art, where he displayed collages, drawings, and paintings. In February 1979, he participated in a show at Guild Hall Museum of the Eastville Artists, an informal council of African American artists on Long Island’s East End devoted to promoting the arts. Other members were Alvin Loving, Robert Freeman, Nanette Carter, and Gaye Ellington (Duke Ellington’s granddaughter). In 1998, he received a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship. Retrospectives of his work were held at Adelphi University in 1999 and at the Sage Colleges in Albany, New York, in 2004. In 2010, Guild Hall selected him for an annual prize exhibition. In 2022, he was inducted in the Guild Hall Academy of Arts by Eric Fischl. His work is represented in numerous museums—including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Georgia Museum of Art; Guild Hall, East Hampton; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Parrish Art Museum; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Yale University Art Gallery—along with other public and corporate collections. 

 

Wimberley grew up in Pleasantville, New Jersey. His mother—a ceramicist and pianist, and his father—who gave him a trumpet to use in a band—encouraged his early interest in art. He served in the army during World War II and subsequently enrolled at Howard University, where he studied painting with James Amos Porter, James Lesesne Wells, and Loïs Mailou Jones. In these years, he developed friendships with legendary jazz musicians, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter. In the 1950s, living in Queens with his wife Juanita, Wimberley worked the night shift at a local post office, which enabled him to care for their son, Walden, during the day. In 1964, the Wimberleys bought land in Sag Harbor, where they built a unique sky-lit Japanese style home. In 2021, the Wimberleys were featured in T Magazine’s feature on the African American art community in Sag Harbor. 

 

Texture played a particularly important role for Wimberley, beginning with assemblages of paper and found objects and continuing in collages from scrap cardboard, paper, cloth, and metal. In the late 1980s, he painted with a sculptural sensibility, applying pigment in a thick, pliant manner. The longtime director of the Pollock-Krasner House, Helen Harrison described these works as an elegant balance of line and gesture. Braff observed that like many abstract artists, Wimberley relied “on color, brushwork, and form, to invent a universe of visual sensations,” yet his originality was most evident in the way he built “emotional content with both color and a daring, experimental use of mass.” From the 1990s into the 2020s, Wimberley drew from earlier explorations for new directions, commanding an array of tools, including steel-wire brushes, spatulas, and pumice. At the decade’s end, he simplified his compositions to focus on particular questions until he reached the right resolutions. 

 

In recent years, Wimberley’s work has continued to receive significant recognition. In 2021, he had a solo exhibition, at the Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, New York and was included in Creating Community: Cinque Gallery Artists at the Art Students League. In 2023, his work was featured in Collection Highlights: African American Art at the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina, and this year was included in Acts of Art and Rebuttal in Greenwich Village at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College. Currently, Wimberley’s work is currently on view in With Passion and Purpose: Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

Wimberley has been represented by Berry Campbell Gallery since 2021, and his most recent exhibition was held at the gallery in February 2025. The gallery extends condolences to the artist’s wife, Juanita, and family and will cherish the memory of Frank’s kindness, joy in life, and unending passion for what he could discover next.