Alonzo Davis: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Alonzo Davis built a career in two registers: the Brockman Gallery he and his brother Dale opened in Leimert Park in 1967, which gave Los Angeles Black artists a room of their own, and his own hand as a muralist and abstractionist, from the 1984 Olympic freeway murals to his later bamboo, Power Pole and Blanket series. This mix maps the Otis-trained painter, the LA scene-builder, and the educator who carried both east to Memphis.

The Kynda mix for Alonzo Davis

• Key Influence · Wanted Poster Series #17 by Charles White (1971). White taught at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where Davis earned his MFA in the early 1970s, and he was the towering figure for a generation of Black LA artists — mentor, draftsman, moral compass. The Wanted Poster works stain found-document surfaces with images of enslaved people for sale, fusing graphic protest with virtuoso drawing. That marriage of formal rigor and explicit political address is the ground Davis's murals and advocacy both stand on.','
• Influencia Obscura · 66 Signs of Neon by Noah Purifoy (1966). Purifoy and Judson Powell gathered three tons of melted neon, charred wood and debris from the 1965 Watts uprising and made an exhibition that toured as a traveling argument for art from wreckage. It is the founding gesture of Black Los Angeles assemblage and the immediate local precedent for the Brockman Gallery's belief that art and neighborhood repair were one project. Davis opened Brockman two years later, in the same civic aftermath.
• Local Roots · The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar (1972). Saar was central to the same South Los Angeles circuit Brockman Gallery served, exhibiting across the city's Black art spaces in the years Davis was programming shows on Degnan Boulevard. Her armed mammy figure, built from a found notepad holder, turned racist kitsch into weaponry and demonstrated how assemblage could argue. Brockman's exhibition record is inseparable from this LA cohort of Saar, Outterbridge and Hammons.
• Beyond the Medium · The Giant Is Awakened by Horace Tapscott (1969). Tapscott's Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension were the sonic wing of the same Black Los Angeles cultural movement Brockman Gallery anchored; the two scenes shared audiences, venues and the conviction that art belonged to the neighborhood that produced it. The Arkestra's communal, non-commercial model of a standing ensemble serving Watts and Leimert Park mirrors Brockman's gallery-as-service.
• Peer · Going to the Olympics by Frank Romero (1984). Romero's cars-and-hearts mural on the Hollywood Freeway was commissioned for the 1984 Summer Olympics alongside Davis's Eye on '84 — the two hung on the same freeway walls in the same program, one of the largest public art commissions in Los Angeles history. Romero came from the Chicano collective Los Four; the Olympic murals briefly fused LA's Black and Chicano public-art movements into one civic commission.
• From the Canon · Eye on '84 by Alonzo Davis (1984). Davis's best-known work, painted for the 1984 Summer Olympics as part of the freeway mural program, translated Olympic spectacle into bands of hot color and chevrons seen at seventy miles an hour. It is the point where his private abstraction and his public-art ambitions meet, and where a gallerist known for promoting others finally occupied the most visible wall in the city. The mural later suffered neglect and restoration battles.
• Key Collaborator · One Nation Under God by Timothy Washington (1970). Washington was among the Los Angeles artists shown by Brockman Gallery, the space Davis ran with his brother Dale from 1967, and he remained part of its circle for decades. This engraved aluminum work — a family group pinned under a flag's authority, incised like a drypoint on metal — exemplifies the experimental, material-driven art Brockman championed when commercial galleries and museums in the city would not exhibit it.
• Legacy · Mithra by Mark Bradford (2008). Bradford grew up in Leimert Park and built his practice from the posted paper and signage of South Los Angeles — the neighborhood whose art infrastructure Brockman Gallery established a generation earlier. Mithra, the plywood ark he raised in flood-ruined New Orleans, is monumental public art made from street material, the Davis premise at full scale: abstraction answerable to a specific Black community's streets.

What influenced Alonzo Davis

• The Block by Romare Bearden (1971). The Block (Romare Bearden) — titan for Alonzo Davis “He and his brother Dale, also an artist, traveled across the country to meet other black artists including the Spiral art collective in Harlem led by Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• A Love Supreme by John Coltrane (1965). A Love Supreme (John Coltrane) — culture for Alonzo Davis (musicbrainz.org)
• Watts Towers by Sabato Rodia (1954). Watts Towers (Sabato Rodia) — ghost for Alonzo Davis (wikidata.org)
• The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence (1940). The Migration Series (Jacob Lawrence) — titan for Alonzo Davis (wikidata.org)
• 66 Signs of Neon by Noah Purifoy (1966). 66 Signs of Neon (Noah Purifoy) — ghost for Alonzo Davis
• Wanted Poster Series #17 by Charles White (1971). Wanted Poster Series #17 (Charles White) — titan for Alonzo Davis
• The Giant Is Awakened by Horace Tapscott (1969). The Giant Is Awakened (Horace Tapscott) — culture for Alonzo Davis
• Art: African American by Samella Lewis (1978). Art: African American (Samella Lewis) — culture for Alonzo Davis

Peers and kindred spirits

• Dale Brockman Davis. The brothers jointly founded and operated Brockman Gallery. (also via Blanket Series, Brockman Gallery) “Civil rights protests were forming across the nation and the Davis brothers took an active role, participating in the James Meredith March dubbed the “March Against Fear”” (parrasch heijnen)
• Brockman Gallery. Alonzo Davis co-founded Brockman Gallery with his brother. “Davis and his brother Alonzo Davis founded and operated Brockman Gallery from 1967 to 1990.” (Wikipedia)
• Going to the Olympics by Frank Romero (1984). Going to the Olympics (Frank Romero) — peer for Alonzo Davis (wikidata.org)
• Injustice Case by David Hammons (1970). Injustice Case (David Hammons) — geography for Alonzo Davis “LA Object & David Hammons Body Prints.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Great Wall of Los Angeles by Judith Baca (1984). The Great Wall of Los Angeles (Judith Baca) — peer for Alonzo Davis (wikidata.org)
• Rag Man by John Outterbridge (1971). Rag Man (John Outterbridge) — collaborator for Alonzo Davis
• The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar (1972). The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (Betye Saar) — geography for Alonzo Davis
• Déjà Vu by John Outterbridge (1980). Déjà Vu (John Outterbridge) — geography for Alonzo Davis
• One Nation Under God by Timothy Washington (1970). One Nation Under God (Timothy Washington) — collaborator for Alonzo Davis
• Sharecropper by Elizabeth Catlett (1952). Sharecropper (Elizabeth Catlett) — collaborator for Alonzo Davis
• Hollywood Jazz: 1945–1972 by Richard Wyatt Jr. (1990). Hollywood Jazz: 1945–1972 (Richard Wyatt Jr.) — peer for Alonzo Davis

Who Alonzo Davis influenced

• The Eastside of South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture by Lauren Halsey (2022). The Eastside of South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture (Lauren Halsey) — legacy for Alonzo Davis
• Mithra by Mark Bradford (2008). Mithra (Mark Bradford) — legacy for Alonzo Davis