Daniel LaRue Johnson

Daniel LaRue Johnson (1938–2017) was an American abstract sculptor, painter, and printmaker.

Early life and education Daniel LaRue Johnson was born in 1938 in Los Angeles. While in high school, he met painter Virginia Jaramillo. Johnson then attended the Chouinard Art Institute in the early 1960s. Many of his works from this period comprise assemblages of found objects that Johnson painted black, which reference the Civil Rights Movement and racial violence in the United States. They returned to New York following the year of study.

Johnson was a longtime friend of political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche, who had attended high school with Johnson's father and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. After Bunch's death in 1971, Johnson was commissioned to create a sculpture in his memory, permanently installed in New York's Ralph Bunche Park in 1980. The abstract steel sculpture is a 50-foot tall, thin pyramid form with several rectangular cut-outs at its base; the work faces the headquarters of the United Nations, which Bunche had helped form and lead for several decades.

Personal life Johnson married painter Virginia Jaramillo in 1960 after the two met in high school. Freedom Now, Number 1 (1963–1964), Museum of Modern Art, New York Untitled (1964), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Nations (1976), Studio Museum in Harlem, New York Lines and Colors (date unknown), Cleveland Museum of Art

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