Betye Saar, the founder of the Black arts movement, has died at the age of 99 | Art and design

Artist Betye Saar, founder of the Black arts movement, died Sunday morning in his hometown of Los Angeles. He was 99 years old.

Saar, a well-known master of assemblage, an art style that builds sculptures from everyday objects, was famous for reclaiming Jim Crow-era memorabilia like dolls and laundry signs and remaking them as images of Black liberation. Saar has also worked in genres including print and video, exploring topics from family to spirituality.

“His iconic works have evolved over time to reflect the environment, culture, politics, ethnicity, technology, economics, and history as they are,” according to Roberts Projects, Los Angeles the image that represents him.

Saar started his career as an artist and switched to art at the age of 35. He continued to create art in the 90s. Saar grew up in Pasadena and was part of a group of Black artists in nearby Altadena; he often mentions Simon Rodia Photos of Watts Towers as the primary source of inspiration.

Throughout his career, Saar has incorporated flea markets and yard sales into discarded items that reflect the consumer culture that characterizes American society.

“My work is about reinventing things,” he told a literary group in the 1970s, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Everything I pick up has a certain strength from its past use that carries over into new use.”

She is perhaps best known for her revolutionary 1972 concept of Aunt Jemima, an image that was once used to sell a syrup-based license plate set in the late 19th century. Little Aunt Jemima was based on “mother” images that depicted enslaved black women as contented domestic servants. It’s Saar The release of Aunt Jemima he has a gun in his left hand, and a bomb exploded between his right hand and chest.

Quaker Oats ditched the Aunt Jemima image in 2021.

Saar’s work also used natural materials collected from travels around the world and researched African and spiritual practices.

“Everywhere I go, I say, ‘What is another religion?’ because every country has it,” he said in a 2021 interview with the Guardian. “There are many other people who believe in magic and have their own religion, and I was really interested in what they did and what their rituals were, but especially visual images.”

Saar taught and inspired a generation of black artists, including artist Kerry James Marshall. Saar has been seen as a leading figure in the west coast sports industry.

In 2026, Saar was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.