5 powerful works by Betye Saar that represent her fearless vision, in art and life

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Set us as preferred Betye Saar, the groundbreaking assemblage artist who helped redefine American art and kickstart the Black women’s movement, died Monday.Throughout a prolific career that spanned decades, Saar brought issues of race and racism to the foreground in ways that were immediate and visceral.

Her work also highlighted her own rich and varied life experiences.The hardworking mother of three daughters called Los Angeles home and collected much of the material for her work from the city’s many flea markets and second hand shops.

Here are five of Saar’s best creations.Among the most famous pieces in Saar’s oeuvre, this smallish piece, just shy of 1-foot-tall, made a gigantic splash in the art world when it was first shown during the “Black Contributions” invitational at the Rainbow Sign — a Black cultural center in Berkeley near the Black Panther headquarters.Saar made the piece for the show, which issued an open invitation to Black artists to create work about Black heroes.

Saar equipped an Aunt Jemima Black mammy figurine with a rifle alongside her broom, and placed a derogatory postcard in front of it featuring another Black mammy with a mulatto child.The assemblage turned the damaging caricature into a revolutionary hero, and made Saar a star of the Black Arts movement.

Many years later, activist Angela Davis credited Saar, and “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” with starting the Black women’s movement.Entertainment & Arts Assemblage artist Betye Saar, who’s known for arming stereotypical images of mammies with deadly weaponry, and has influenced generations of artists, has died.

Created as Saar shifted her practice from mostly printmaking to collage and assemblage, “Black Girl’s Window,” is a largely autobiographical work that features a shadowed face in a weathered wooden window frame, her hands — painted with astrological signs — pressed against the glass as ...