One of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, Miles Davis was a man of many talents. Around 1980, he turned to sketching and painting to, as he explained, keep his �mind occupied with something when [he was] not playing music.” This hobby quickly turned into a serious passion, and Davis approached it with the same obsessive creativity he applied to music. The result is an impressive archive of unique and evocative visual work showcasing the varied skill of this legendary artist. Throughout the 1980s, Davis studied regularly with New York painter Jo Gelbard, developing a distinct graphic style. Incorporating bright colors and geometric shapes, his art is reminiscent of work by Pablo Picasso as well as African tribal art, the historical influences he cited during occasional interviews on the subject. Author Scott Gutterman sat down with Miles Davis himself before he died in 1991 and the artist’s own commentary accompanies this remarkable showcase of his work. Sadly, very few of his pieces were exhibited during Miles Davis’s lifetime. Over the last two decades, the Estate of Miles Davis has worked with gallery owners and private parties to assemble a comprehensive collection of the musician’s artwork. Many celebrities are among the most adamant collectors, including Quincy Jones, who offers a foreword to the book. This long-overdue celebration is a treasure for art lovers as well as music aficionados who will appreciate the window into the life of this creative genius.
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Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Davis belongs to the great tradition of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, although unlike those musicians he was never considered to have the highest level of technical ability. His greatest achievement as a musician, however, was to move beyond being regarded as a distinctive and influential stylist on his own instrument and to shape whole styles and ways of making music through the work of his bands, in which many of the most important jazz musicians of the second half of the Twentieth Century made their names. Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame, and Down Beat's Jazz Hall of Fame.
