Raymond Howell was born in Oakland, California on September 7, 1927.
An African-American painter and printmaker, Raymond Howell emerged from a difficult childhood to become one of the most respected artists of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area. Howell had no formal art training and by the age of thirty was supporting himself through his art.
During the mid 1960’s, Raymond Howell opened Art Associates West, a gallery and art school in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. In the following years, Howell exhibited his art throughout the United States. His serigraphs – collographs were included in International Art Expositions in both New York and San Francisco. Retrospective exhibitions of his art took place at Stanford University in 1999 and at the Oakland Museum of California in 2002.
Concentrating largely upon African-American subjects, Raymond Howell’s work depicts street and city scenes, portrayals of children and musicians, often in a surrealist manner. He also experimented with abstraction using a modernist cubist approach. Raymond Howell was also a founding member and director of Project Dare, an art school for minority children.
Raymond Howell died in Oakland, California on January 6, 2002.
Raymond Howell ~ American Artist 