Pioneering artist Betye Saar, celebrated for her exploration of Black identity, culture, and spirituality through her vibrant works, passed away in Los Angeles on Sunday morning at the age of 99.
The news of Saar’s passing was confirmed by her family on Monday, just days before what would have been her 100th birthday.
As a prominent figure of the Black Art Movement in the 1960s, Saar broke new ground with her innovative assemblage boxes. These unique sculptures, crafted from found objects, transformed Jim Crow-era artifacts into compelling symbols of Black empowerment.
“Saar’s richly symbolic artwork has matured over the years, reflecting the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical realms it inhabits,” remarked Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represented her.
Starting her journey in design, Saar shifted her focus to art at 35, and her creative pursuits continued well into her 90s. Having grown up in Pasadena and immersed in a vibrant Black artistic community in nearby Altadena, Saar often drew inspiration from Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers.
Saar’s practice incorporated painting, printmaking, sculpture and found objects including dolls, washboards and other antiques. Boats, clocks, cages and altars recur in her practice, as well as symbols of the occult and cosmology. She often referenced her astrological sign of Leo in the form of lions, punctuating many works.
“Her appropriation of Black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion,” the gallery said. “Among the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach.”
Made in 1969, “Black Girl’s Window,” was groundbreaking. Still, it wasn’t widely celebrated until decades later, and it was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2019. “There weren’t that many galleries in Los Angeles at the time and there certainly weren’t any for Black artists,” she once said in an interview.
“The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” created in 1972, is one of her most important works. It features memorabilia she collected that denigrated Black people, included a “mammy,” or 19th century minstrel character who smiled while serving white slave owners.
In Saar’s hands though, the figure is reclaimed: She smiles, but holds a rifle and has a hand grenade.
It came in response to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Saar said King’s death “triggered a rage within me, and the mystic transformed into the warrior.”
“I had a lot of hesitation about using powerful, negative images such as these — thinking about how white people saw Black people, and how that influenced the ways in which Black people saw each other,” Saar said. “What saved it was that I made Aunt Jemima into a revolutionary figure.”
After more than 130 years, Quaker Oat announced it would retire its Aunt Jemima brand in 2020, acknowledging the logo and its origins were “based on a racial stereotype.”
Saar taught and mentored generations of Black artists, including painter Kerry James Marshall.
Though Saar’s work was exhibited in a 1975 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in the decades that followed large institutions have exhibited her work only sporadically. In 2019 though, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and MoMA mounted concurrent solo shows.
In spring 2026, Saar was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
“She had boundless energy for making art. I think she had a lot to say and was tired of the art world being dominated by white males,” said Angela Robinson Witherspoon, who produced and directed a documentary in 2023 on Saar’s life. “Betye Saar: Ready to Be A Warrior” features interviews with John Legend, Tina Knowles and other prominent voices.
“She was raising her three young daughters and she wanted to be part of the Civil Rights Movement,” Robinson Witherspoon said.
“Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar,” which focuses on costume design, is currently on view at Robert Projects in Los Angeles, and a collection of more than 100 of her dolls are on view at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan.
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Associated Press Writer Anna Furman contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
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