Reginald Madison
b. 1941, Chicago, IL
Born in the South Side of Chicago in 1941, Reginald Madison emerged from the Black Arts Movement (1965–1975) as a self-taught artist whose path was defined by determination and an unwavering commitment to his practice. As a teenager, he discovered a discarded box of paints, an encounter that would spark a lifelong devotion to artmaking. From a young age, he was surrounded by musicians, becoming deeply inspired by improvisational jazz which fueled his instinctive approach in the studio. He later worked at U.S. Steel South Works, taking on extra shifts to support his young family and to fund a formative year of travel in Europe, where he visited museums and galleries in Paris, Munich, and Madrid.In 1968, Madison had his first public presentation at Art & Soul in Chicago, where he was awarded third place in a competition juried by artist Richard Hunt and curator Jan van der Marck, founding director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. This early recognition affirmed his artistic direction and led him to continue his practice across New York City and Western Massachusetts, before ultimately settling in Hudson, New York, where he lived and worked until his passing in 2026.
Madison was passionately versed in art history and was especially influenced by artists Fernand Leger, Stuart Davis, Jacob Lawrence, as well as artists he knew personally including Thornton Dial and the trickster David Hammons. Musicians who pioneered new approaches to sound equally inspired him, including Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and especially the notorious Sun Ra.
Madison approached his paintings and sculptures alike with a studied sense of form mixed with the restless spontaneity of a rebellious spirit. Working in both figuration and abstraction, he developed a distinctive palette of earthy, matte tones, as Madison famously abhorred sheen. He achieved highly-textured canvases and panels with an array of tools and materials, from tar to sponges to brushes, with colors often mixed directly on the studio walls. His sculptures were constructed of salvaged wood parts that he composed into formidable forms and figures that towered in his studio. These were his orchestral talismans.
Madison was represented by Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York City from 1975-2009. SEPTEMBER Gallery began representing him in 2021, followed by Uffner & Liu in 2024. Madison’s work has twice been reviewed in the New York Times (1992, 2024) and is in prominent collections including: The Baltimore Museum of Art, Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, University of Santa Barbara Art, Design & Architecture Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. His work has been featured in historic exhibitions including, “Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975”, Duke University Press, and “The Time Is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980”, The University of Chicago Press. In 2021, Madison was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
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