NEW YORK
Ted Joans
Lady Liberty 1962-1964
Opening September 13, 2025, 5-7:30PM.
On view through November 5, 2025.

With a book launch and signing of Steven Belletto’s “Black Surrealist: The Legend of Ted Joans”

At Zürcher Gallery, New York

Steven Belletto’s Black Surrealist: The Legend of Ted Joans will be available for purchase for $30 (CASH ONLY).

Zürcher Gallery’s exhibition catalogue, Ted Joans: Lady Liberty 1962 - 1964 (73 pages) will be available for purchase for $15 (CASH ONLY). The digital edition can be viewed here.

Zürcher Gallery is thrilled to present this second solo-exhibition of Ted Joans in New York, “Lady Liberty 1962-1964,” which takes place long after “The Liberty Show” at Neo Persona Gallery, 51 Hudson St, New York (Summer 1986) features a selection of 16 collage-frottage drawings made in 1962-63, shown as a series for the very first time, as well as a group of 20 small frottages made in Athens in January 1964, drawn from a sketchbook “Not only from Bunk to Monk but from old Buddy Bolden to the young Ornette Coleman …” In “Mary had a little lamp,” Ted draws the erect arm of the Lady, the torch, and the flame in a fragmented way and yields to pure poetry. These early works by Ted Joans embody his revolt and cry for life and dream.

Ted Joans would have enjoyed meeting the French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), who in 1886, gave form to Lady Liberty, one of the most powerful symbols of freedom. Bartholdi wanted the Statue of Liberty to be a potent signal of progress and emancipation and a monument to “light up the world.” Bartholdi’s passion for monumentalism and his conception of the Statue of Liberty had its origins in his travels in Egypt, where he saw the pyramids and the vestiges of the pharaohs. In 1855, he sailed from Marseille to Alexandria, traveled on the Nile, ventured on foot and on camelback, and filled notebooks with drawings. Ted Joans, a tireless world-traveler, also went to Egypt several times, and in 1976 he wrote to Wifredo Lam about his fascination with the “Sphinx et les autres chose surréaliste d’Egypte."

The stars were aligned …. Ted Joans was deeply concerned with freedom - both its practice and its symbolic representations. While he entered the world on July 20th, 1928, he elected to celebrate his birthday on July 4th, Independence Day, which is written “July 4, 1776” on the tablet held in the Lady’s left hand of the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty inspired many artists, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barbara Chase-Riboud, to name just a few, in quest of freedom and emancipation. As a monumental dream, there may not be another artifact which could appeal to Ted Joans more than the Statue of Liberty.

As part of this exhibition, Zürcher Gallery is also presenting Ted Joans' silent poem, "Taking Liberty As If" (16:49), accompanied by tracks from Oliver Lake's album, "Heavy Spirits" 1975: "While Pushing Down Turn" and "Owsheet."

Bio
Ted Joans (born Theodore Jones in Cairo, Illinois on July 4, 1928 - died on April 25, 2003, in Vancouver) is probably best known for his poetry, his charcoal chalk graffiti Bird Lives! on the walls of New York City upon Charlie Parker’s death and his mantra Jazz is my religion, surrealism is my point of view. He was trained as a trumpeter and a painter and studied fine arts at Indiana University. He was also a world traveler and was proud of being Black. Ted lived many lives. He arrived in New York in 1951, where he met Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and the Abstract Expressionist painters. Although he was a villager, he never considered himself a beatnik; instead, he was a jazz poet of the beat generation. In Paris, Ted Joans mingled with Elisa Breton, Joyce Mansour, and Jayne Cortez, all women affiliated with surrealism. Throughout his life, Ted never stopped asserting the urgency of surrealism’s imperatives from the perspective of a Black U.S. expatriate. He adopted Surrealism as a weapon to defend himself against the racial vicissitudes and violence imposed upon him in America, hence transforming it into a liberatory practice.
Ted Joans was interested in portraits and faces of Old Masters. He used to go to museums in Europe and buy postcards of the Old Masters' paintings to make Paste-Up Postcards. He then would cut out the faces from the acquired images and replace them with faces of Black people to create a literal transformation and underscore the racialized aspects of the previous omissions. He called this technique Outography. Ted Joans also painted and drew portraits of the people he met and befriended. Remembering and Remembrances (2000), is a drawing series he made between October 15, 23, and 29, 2000. For this series, he took a spontaneous approach similar to surrealist automatic writing and used it to express his connection to figures; such as André Breton, Malcolm X, Ishmael Reed, and Allen Ginsberg. The vast network of friendships he made with writers, poets, painters, and musicians, is also reflected in Long Distance, an exquisite corpse Ted Joans started in 1976. The work was finished in 2005 after his death and involved 133 contributors. Long Distance is currently exhibited in Vital Signs at MoMA (until February 22, 2025).

Selected Exhibitions:

Upcoming
2026 - (October 2026 - January 2027) Ted Joans Retrospective (First Retrospective in Europe), Musée cantonal des beaux-arts, Lausanne, Switzerland

Current/Past
2025 - (September 16, 2025 - March, 2026) Les 40 Ans de la Galerie - Anniversaire, Galerie Pixi, 95 rue de Seine, Paris
- (September 13 - November 5, 2025) Lady Liberty 1962-1964, Zürcher Gallery, 33 Bleecker St, New York
- (August 28, 2025) 100 Years of Surrealism, Centro Vlady-UACM, Mexico City
- (March 19 - June 30, 2025) Paris Noir, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2024 - (November 3, 2024 - February 22, 2025) Vital Signs, Artists and the Body, curated by Lanka Tattersall at MoMA, NY
- (October 15, 2024 - March 2, 2025) But live here? No thanks: Surrealism and Anti-Fascism, Lenbachhaus, Kunstbau, Munich
- (October 14 - 20, 2024) Ted Joans, Bill Dixon, Oliver Lake, Zürcher Gallery, Outsider Paris, Le Molière, Paris
- (September 12 - October 29, 2024) Ted Joans, Jazz is my Religion, Zürcher Gallery, 33 Bleecker St, New York
- (September 3, 2024 - January 13, 2025) Surréalisme, Centre Pompidou, Paris
- (September 2 - October 9, 2024) Ted Joans, Dirty Rainbow (1981), curated by Gwenolee Zürcher, Galerie Pixi, 95 rue de Seine, Paris
- (June 1 - November 17, 2024) Ted Joans: Land of the Rhinoceri, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
- (March 10 - July 28, 2024) Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, Organized by Curator Maria Elena Ortiz, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
2022 - The Art of Counterpoint, 8 Musicians Make Art, Zürcher Gallery, 33 Bleecker St, New York
- (February 24, 2022 – August 29, 2022). Surrealism Beyond Borders, Tate Modern, London
2021 - (October 11, 2021 – January 30, 2022) Surrealism Beyond Borders, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
2019 - David Hammons presents Ted Joans: Exquisite Corpse, Curated by Manthia Diawara, Terri Geis Lumiar Cité, Lisboa
2016 - Ted Joans’ collages – Dr Rotatep’s Teducation in life, poetry & totem animals (Rhino-okapi-tapir-aardvardk-pangolin-echidna- platypus), curated by Duncan Caldwell, Oak Bluffs Public Library, Martha's Vineyard
1994 - Ted Joans, Galerie 1900 - 2000, Paris
- (December 1994 – January 1995) The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, American Center, Paris
- (September 30 – November 12, 1994) The Return of the Cadavre Exquis,
- Forum for Contemporary Art, St Louis
- (July 7 – September 5, 1994) The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica
- (February 5 – April 10, 1994) The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
1993 - (November 6 – December 18, 1993) The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, Drawing Center, New York
1991- After Duchamp, Galerie 1900 / 2000, Paris
1968 - (April 1968) Ted Joans, griot surréaliste – Afroamerican fetishes – Invitation au vernissage – Black power, black power, black power …, Galerie Maya, Paris
1959 - (May 15 - June 15, 1959) Downtown-Uptown, 53 fighting cooperative artists, Marino galleries, NY 1958 - Phoenix Gallery, 40 Third avenue, New York
1956 - Galerie Fantastique, 108 St Mark’s Place, New York
1953 - Mau Mau paintings, Café Rienzi, New York


Museum Collections:
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Museum of Modern Art Collection, New York, NY
• Musée cantonal des beaux-arts, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA