For over thirty years, the Black British artist Claudette Johnson has created larger than life drawings of Black women and men that are at once intensely intimate and powerful. Her figures — often depictions of herself, friends or relatives — usually adopt strong poses and gaze confidently beyond the frame at the viewer. Working in a variety of media, ranging from dark pastel to vibrant gouache, she looks to tell a different story of the Black British experience: ‘I felt that the figure could express everything; through figuration, abstraction and invention I could tell personal and in its widest sense political truths,’ she said in 2013.

Executed in 2018 and now held in Tate’s collection, Standing Figure with African Masks is a large-scale drawing in pastel and gouache of a female figure with her stomach exposed, hands on her hips. She looks brazenly at the viewer, with a bold expression on her face. She is standing in front of an abstract background featuring three figures wearing African masks, a nod to Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon of 1907. Drawn from life in the artist’s studio in East London, it is the first recognisable image that Johnson has made of herself. ‘But I’m not interested in portraiture or its tradition,’ she has said. ‘I’m interested in giving space to Black women presence. A presence which has been distorted, hidden and denied.’

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