Growing up in Alabama in the 1950s, Kerry James Marshall lived just a few blocks from the local Black Panther headquarters. In 1963, he moved to Los Angeles, to the Nickerson Gardens public housing projects, a few years before the race riots began. In high school, Marshall met the Social Realist painter Charles White, who became a friend and mentor, encouraging him to work in a vibrant, realist style. Marshall’s paintings were striking—stylized yet deeply rooted in the complexities of his background. “Black people occupy a space, even mundane spaces, in the most fascinating ways,” he once said. “And so in the paintings I try to enact that same tendency toward the theatrical that seems to be so integral a part of the Black cultural body.” Today Marshall is recognized as one of America’s most important painters, known for large-scale acrylic works in which the Black figure dominates. This London exhibition—the largest of his career outside the U.S.—brings together 70 works in all their majesty. —Elena Clavarino