“David Hammons is frequently described as “elusive” and even “reclusive,” yet he is ever-present in discussions of art in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The youngest of ten children, he moved to Los Angeles in 1963, attending Los Angeles City College. After a year he transferred to Los Angeles Trade Technical College to study advertising and began taking night classes at Otis Art Institute, where he worked with renowned artist Charles White. In 1966 Hammons enrolled full-time at Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts), graduating in 1968.”

Continue reading at the Hammer Museum’s “Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980” Digital Archive.

Image: David Hammons in his Los Angeles Studio, 1970, Pray for America, 1968, is shown at left and a portion of Wine Leading the Wine, c. 1969, is visible at right, photo by Robert A. Nakamura.