Chicago born Earl Beauford Miller studied at the Pratt Institute of Art under Richard Lindner, at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1954-1956 with Reuben Tam, and exhibited in 1960 and 1961 at the Phoenix Gallery, New York. Miller lived and exhibited throughout Europe, including Germany, Spain and Scandinavia.
Miller was a member of Romare Bearden’s Spiral Group, a New York–based collective of African-American artists. Originally formed for the purpose of discussing logistics surrounding the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, Spiral grew into an aesthetic group that met weekly to discuss their relationship to the civil rights movement and the shifting landscape of American art, culture and politics and was one of the first artist groups to call for the cultural community's involvement in social change. The group’s membership included Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Reginald Gammon, Felrath Hines, Alvin Hollingsworth, Norman Lewis, Richard Mayhew, Merton Simpson, Hale Woodruff and James Yeargans. Spiral’s members worked in a wide variety of styles largely within the tradition of modernist abstraction using various media including oil painting, collage, printmaking and watercolor. Miller went on to teach art at the University of Washington, Seattle beginning 1969.
The Museum of Modern Art Lending Services, New York, with the label on the verso
Private collection, Massachusetts.
Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 22 April 2021
Cederholm, Theresa Dickason, Afro-American Artists, 1973