Alonzo Davis

Background Davis was born on February 2, 1942, in Tuskegee, Alabama. He grew up near Tuskegee University where his father was a professor of psychology. Davis's family moved from Tuskegee, Alabama to Los Angeles, California in 1955 where he was exposed to Asian art. Davis became a practitioner of Zen meditation although he did not convert to Buddhism. Davis, then an art student at Pepperdine, disagreed with the overwhelmingly white focus of his coursework and sought to understand the black art scene in America. He and his brother Dale, also an artist, traveled across the country to meet other black artists including the Spiral art collective in Harlem led by Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff.

Brockman Gallery

The Davis brothers opened the Brockman Gallery in 1967 on Degnan Avenue in Leimert Park. They got the idea for opening the Brockman Gallery during the drive back to Southern California from the 1966 Meredith March in Jackson, Mississippi. The name "Brockman" refers to Alonzo and Dale's maternal grandmother's maiden name. In 1973 the brothers also founded a non-profit organization called Brockman Productions to support art in the African-American community. In 1976 Davis started working at Brockman Gallery full-time.

From 1991 to 1992, Davis taught at the San Antonio Art Institute. He then served as dean of the Memphis College of Art from 1993 to 2002. has a fellowship offered there in his name for writers, composers, and artists of African or Latino ethnicity. The mural suffered weathering and was considered unrecoverable. The mural was painted over in 2001 by Caltrans.