Portraits of 20th Century American Writers: Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison by George H. Rothacker - acrylic on canvas - 24" x 24" - Original painting $2400, prints @$90 each plus tax and shipping (Prints are an edition of 50, signed, titled and numbered with an image area of 13"x 13").

There are writers known for one specific piece of work such as Harper Lee and her monumental novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Another example is Ralph Ellison who spent 5 years working on what he called “an ill-conceived short novel.” That piece of writing became Invisible Man, narrated by an anonymous voice about the struggles of the “negro” in America.

Invisible Man, published in 1952, became an anthem for black America and won Ellison the National Book Award. I came upon the book in the late 1960s when struggling for my own identity. Being a “white man,” my own journey was easier than Ellison’s and the novel's narrator’s, but growing up “poor” had made me somewhat “invisible” with challenges that seemed impossible ahead. Ellison's character seemed to succeed on many levels despite his handicaps, but was torn between the roles he was forced to play in life and the choices that would eventually destroy him.

Ellison taught at Rutgers, Yale and the University of Chicago, and published short stories, reviews, essays and an “incomplete” novel during his lifetime, but he had always imagined himself a jazz musician and identified with music more then with writing. Besides the Puitzer, his lone novel, Invisible Man, published during his lifetime won, him a place in history, American culture, and a National Medal of the Arts award in 1985.