Rafael Leonardo Black, a self-trained artist who spent more than 40 years creating elaborate pictorial mythologies steeped in art history and popular culture, and who had his first New York gallery show at 64, died on May 15 in Brooklyn. He was 71.
The cause was complications of Covid-19, said Francis M. Naumann, the art dealer who represents him.
Mr. Black’s 2013 debut, at Francis Naumann Fine Art in Manhattan, consisted of collagelike pencil drawings of historically diverse figures and scenes brought together under umbrella themes. The work was so minutely detailed that the gallery provided magnifying glasses to view it. There was also a multipage exhibition guide, with numbered charts of the compositions and annotations by the artist identifying the figures depicted.
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A 1982 drawing called “Oneirology,” Mr. Black explained, “presents the towering beauty as well as the horrors of the 20th century.” The tutelary spirit was Picasso, represented by a centrally placed mini-version of one of his 1930s “Weeping Woman” paintings, around which circulated figures of Coco Chanel, André Breton and the 19th-century Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, known for her love of French fashion, who was mentioned by Marcel Proust.
If these images may be seen as occupying positions on the beauty side of Mr. Black’s 20th-century equation, the horror component had at least equal weight. It included images of three Latin American dictators, a Shell Oil refinery and a portrait, excerpted from a photograph, of a Roman Catholic cardinal in deep conversation with Joseph Goebbels.
Mr. Black himself refrained from any obvious passing of judgment. The players in “Oneirology,” including Orpheus, Andy Warhol and three giraffes, commingle as if at a party. They are all overseen by a guiding star in the form of a glowing image of the disco diva Grace Jones’s smiling lips.
Source: Rafael Leonardo Black, Solitary and Self-Trained Artist, Dies at 71
