Loretta Pettway

Four-Block Strip

1954-1964

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Loretta Pettway

Four-Block Strip

Loretta Pettway

Four-Block Strip

1954-1964

Physical Qualities Cotton, synthetic fibers, 78 × 73 in. (198.1 × 185.4 cm.)

Credit Line Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation; and purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Object Number 2020.32

During the early 1960s, Loretta Pettway created Four-Block Strip from the scraps of men’s clothing and cotton twill. Here, Pettway’s sure hand combined found materials using rhythmic improvisation. Variations in scale and color are stitched together in the geometric forms of recycled fabric to create four distinct parts of a whole. A member of the Gee’s Bends quilters, direct descendants of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the Alabama cotton plantations of Joseph Gee (died 1824), Pettway learned quilt making from her grandmother. In this way, she participated in a history of knowledge sharing amongst the women of Gee’s Bend, enabling them to ensure economic independence as well as stylistic and technical continuity.

The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase and gift, 2020; Souls Grown Deep Foundation, by 2019; William Arnett Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta, Georgia, by 2002

Alvia Wardlaw, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" September 6 – November 10, 2002. Circulated to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 6 September–10 November 2002; the Whitney Museum, New York, 21 November 2002–9 March 2003; the Mobile Museum of Art, 16 June–31 August 2003; the Milwaukee Art Museum, 27 September 2003–4 January 2004; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 14 February–17 May 2004; the Cleveland Museum of Art, 27 June–12 September 2004; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 15 October 2004–2 January 2005; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 13 February–8 May 2005; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,1 June–21 August 2005; The Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, 11 September–4 December 2005; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 25 March–18 June 2006; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, 15 July–26 November 2006, Museum of Art, Ft Lauderdale, September 7, 2007 – January 7, 2008.

Brittany Luberda and Stella Hendricks, BMA, "She Knew Where She Was Going: Gee's Bend Quilts and Civil Rights," March 10, 2021 - August 1, 2021

Arnett, William, Paul Arnett, and Joanne Cubbs. Gee's Bend: the architecture of the quilt. Atlanta, GA: Tinwood Books, 2006, 70.