Mark Borghi

Alvin D. Loving Jr. (1935 – 2005), better known as Al Loving was an African–American abstract expressionist and painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, fabric constructions, and large paper collages – all exploring complicated color relationships.

Loving earned a BFA from the University of Illinois in 1963 and an MFA from University of Michigan in 1965. Within a year of moving to New York City, he received his first solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He received National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in 1970, 1971, 1975, 1976, and 1985; and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986. Loving created large-scale commissioned public works, including a ceramic mural in one of Detroit’s People Mover stations and another in the David Adamany Library at Wayne State University. In 1996, he created a collage painting for the Sacramento Convention Center, and in 2001 he completed a large mosaic wall with 70 stained-glass windows for Brooklyn’s Broadway-East New York subway station. Although he never matched the success of his first show, Loving exhibited steadily throughout his life in group and solo exhibitions at numerous venues, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Studio Museum in Harlem; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York; Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France; and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York. His work appears in many public collections including the Whitney, the Detroit Art Institute, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.