Skip Navigation

Web of Life

John Biggers

American Art

This work is the final design for a twenty-six-foot mural for the Nabrit Science Hall at Texas Southern University. John Biggers described its subject as “the interdependence of living organisms in the balance of nature, and the relationship of all organisms to one another through the long line of evolutionary descent.”

Biggers centered the image on an essential earth mother. Throughout, he paired oppositional references to life and death (winter and summer), male and female (the two nudes), and Africa and America (in vignettes of harvest and sowing). A leading twentieth-century African American painter and muralist, Biggers drew inspiration from the Mexican Mural Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. He also infused the composition with the kind of organic, cellular design that was so current in midcentury American art.
MEDIUM Tempera on wood
DATES 1958
DIMENSIONS 22 x 92 in. (55.9 x 233.7 cm) frame: 29 1/4 x 99 1/4 x 2 in. (74.3 x 252.1 x 5.1 cm)  (show scale)
INSCRIPTIONS Inscribed on verso: "Web of Life / Mural Sketch / Nabrett Science Hall / T.S.U. Houston / John Biggers"
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2011.50
CREDIT LINE Brooklyn Museum Fund for African American Art and Florence B. and Carl L. Selden Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION John Biggers (American, 1924-2001). Web of Life, 1958. Tempera on wood, 22 x 92 in. (55.9 x 233.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Fund for African American Art and Florence B. and Carl L. Selden Fund, 2011.50. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2011.50_PS6.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 2011.50_PS6.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT © artist or artist's estate
Copyright for this work may be controlled by the artist, the artist's estate, or other rights holders. A more detailed analysis of its rights history may, however, place it in the public domain. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.