Raymond Jennings Saunders was born on October 28, 1934, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. From a young age he showed artistic promise; he attended public schools in Pittsburgh and participated in Saturday art classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art while still a young student. A key early mentor was Joseph C. Fitzpatrick, the Pittsburgh art teacher who encouraged him and taught other artists such as Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, and Mel Bochner.

He pursued formal training, earning his BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1960, with studies also at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and courses through the Barnes Foundation. Shortly after, he completed his MFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in 1961. He later lived and worked primarily in Oakland, California. He held teaching positions—most notably at California State University, East Bay (Hayward) and as a professor (and later emeritus) at California College of the Arts.

Saunders passed away on July 19, 2025, in Oakland, California, at age 90.

Saunders developed a distinctive practice blending abstraction, assemblage, collage, and mixed media, always with a strong undercurrent of social and political commentary. He resisted being pigeonholed as a “Black artist” whose work must speak only through identity labels. Instead, he insisted on art that embraces multiplicity to articulate both personal experience and broader cultural tensions.

Saunders is perhaps equally known for his 1967 pamphlet Black Is a Color, in which he argued that art by Black artists should not be constrained by expectations tied to race. He pushed back against both white critics and Black nationalists who attempted to assign narrow definitions to what “Black art” should be. It’s a foundational text for understanding how Saunders saw his own work and identity.

His work has received renewed attention recently with the 2022 exhibition at Andrew Kreps Gallery, NY. The Carnegie Museum of Art held the first retrospective of his art in 2025 (it just wrapped up this past July), titled Flowers from a Black Garden.

His works are included in the permanent collections of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Howard University, Washington, DC; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland; and Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, CA; among others.

Selected Exhibitions

Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, 2014

In Search of Missing Masters: The Lewis Tanner Moore Collection of African American Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA, 2009

RAYMOND SAUNDERS: Black Paintings, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA, 1995

RAYMOND SAUNDERS: Recent Work, Oakland Museum of Art, CA, 1994

Raymond Saunders: Paintings, Drawings, and Collages, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA, 1987

Tradition and Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade 1963-1973, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1985

Contextures, Just Above Midtown Gallery, NY, 1978

RAYMOND SAUNDERS, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA, 1974

RAYMOND SAUNDERS, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, 1971

Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, 1971

Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, MA, 1970

Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York, NY, 1966. 1969-1972