The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Print with a crowd of stylized figures with medium-dark skin tones raising their fists in the air, everything but their arms and faces shadowed in black. In the background, fractured overlays of the word "UNITED" in all capital, block letters overlay in combinations red, blue, yellow, and purple, the letters smaller on one side and wider on the other in triangular shards.

Unite

1969, printed 1971

Barbara Jones-Hogu

(American, 1938–2017)
America
color screenprint
Image: 56.9 x 76.7 cm (22 3/8 x 30 3/16 in.); Sheet: 64.7 x 84.1 cm (25 1/2 x 33 1/8 in.)
Karl B. Goldfield Trust 2021.14
© Barbara Jones-Hogu
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Barbara Jones-Hogu began to work primarily in screenprint, the technique used here, after the tools she used to make woodcuts were stolen while she was a student in Chicago.

Description

Barbara Jones-Hogu was a founding member of AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a Chicago-based artists’ collective founded in 1968 to forge a distinctly Black form of contemporary art. Unite is among the group’s most recognizable images and features a crowd with fists raised in the Black Power salute. Jones-Hogu was struck by the potential of this simple gesture to unify. An accomplished and innovative screenprinter, she produced the layered forms of color and text for each impression herself.
  • 1971-2010
    Studio of the artist [1938-2017], Chicago
    about 2010-2021
    (Lusenhop Fine Art, Chicago, [now Cleveland], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)
    2021-
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Women in Print: Recent Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 16-June 19, 2022).
  • {{cite web|title=Unite|url=false|author=Barbara Jones-Hogu|year=1969, printed 1971|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2021.14