, and our phone starts ringing off the hook. Things started selling at auction for four or five times the estimate. We wish Winfred could have seen it.”Born in poverty in Cuthbert, Georgia, Rembert was raised by his aunt, a field laborer, who took him to the cotton fields as a child. The scene is depicted in his painting, currently part of “Winfred Rembert: Memory is Alive” exhibition at James Barron Art in Kent, Connecticut.
“Thank God I’m alive, and while I’m still alive I can talk about it,” Rembert told Erin I. Kelly, who co-authored. “I can talk about surviving. I am a witness. And when I die, I didn’t die by the rope. I just died from being an old man.” In 2000, he snuck into the Yale Graduate Club where “these rich folks at Yale were going to donate some money for artists in the community,” he recalled in the book. At the end of the event, he unrolled an artwork that he brought with him.
In 2002, the artist met Peter Tillou, an antiques dealer in Litchfield, Connecticut, who became his champion . Tillou introduced him to prominent art-world figures including Warren Adelson, the founder of Adelson Galleries.Adam said, noting the artist’s magnetic personality and booming voice. “You look at the chain gang pictures and you’d think this happened during slavery, but it happened in the 1960s.
“He got very addicted to it,” Mitchell said. “He always seemed like a strong man and it was hard for him to accept that his body was breaking down.”