Ellen Powell Tiberino

Ellen Powell Tiberino (1937 – February 28, 1992)^[1][2] was an artist who infused works in the figurative tradition with an African American spirit.^[3] Themes to which she frequently returned in her work include African American life and history, and portrayals of girls and women in life situations such as pregnancy and motherhood.^[3] She exhibited widely in both Philadelphia and New York. Her drawings and paintings are held the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. Museum director Anne d'Harnoncourt particularly admired Powell Tiberino's ability to convey character and her use of line, describing it as "alive and forceful".^[3] Powell Tiberino has been acclaimed as Philadelphia's "premier African-American woman artist".^[4]

Biography

Ellen Powell was the daughter of William and Queenie Powell, Baptist sharecroppers who moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Cape Charles, Virginia in 1937, just a few weeks before Ellen was born.^[3] At 12, Ellen converted to Catholicism.^[5] She attended Overbrook High School, and then went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1956–1961). She was the second black woman to receive a Cresson Traveling Scholarship, in 1959, which she used to travel in Europe.^[2][3] She lived in New York City for the next six years.^[3]

In 1967, she married Joseph Tiberino, an Italian American Catholic artist who grew up in Philadelphia and attended the University of the Arts.^[3] Of their children, Raphael Tiberino, Ellen Tiberino and Gabriele Tiberino have also become well-known Philadelphia artists.^[4]

Ellen Powell Tiberino died in 1992, after a fourteen-year battle with cancer.^[6] Even when bedridden, she continued to work, in a burst of creative activity that defied death. She told her husband, "I'm trying to work fast because I don't have a lot of time left."^[1] Some of her later self-portraits have been compared to the work of Frida Kahlo.^[7]

The MOVE Confrontation

Her work was often thematically dark, including portrayals of lynchings and painful historical events. Evelyn Redcross of the October Gallery has said "She was able to show you the sides of life that you may not want to deal with."^[2] A particularly controversial piece was a three-dimensional, seven-foot relief sculpture entitled The MOVE Confrontation, which Powell Tiberino and her husband created in response to the 1985 MOVE tragedy in which five children died. The sculpture depicts people on fire, viewed by Mayor W. Wilson Goode, horrified spectators, and a mask of death.^[2] Shown at Temple University, a number of people reportedly found it distressing and disturbing, including Goode's daughter. Powell Tiberino was quoted as responding that "I paint life, and life is not always beautiful.^[8][9]

Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum of Contemporary American Art

In 1999, her home at 3819 Hamilton St. in the Powelton Village neighborhood of Philadelphia and an extended courtyard area on Spring Garden and Hamilton Streets, became the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum of Contemporary American Art.^[3] According to her husband, Joseph Tiberino, "We want to show other artists' work, too, in special exhibitions. And we also want to establish a permanent collection of work by Ellen's contemporaries."^[3] The area includes both her paintings and those of other family members and friends, framing her work "within its natural context, which is eclectic and religiously flavored as well as biracial."^[3]

Tiberino: The Art of Life

New Jersey filmmaker Derrick Woodyard has worked with Joseph Tiberino and other family members to create a feature-length documentary film about Ellen and the rest of the Tiberino family, entitled Tiberino: The Art of Life.^{[6][10][11][12]}

Exhibitions

• Her first solo exhibition occurred in 1977, and was the first solo show to be featured at the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, now the African American Museum in Philadelphia.^[3]
• The Unflinching Eye: Works of the Tiberino Family Circle, is a 50-year retrospective exhibit of the entire family, at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, 2013–2014.^[4]

References