From the artist whose work hung in a million homes when galleries wouldn't show it.
A framed lithograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Hulis Mavruk, from his African American Collection. Painted in the early 1990s.
Hulis Mavruk was born in southern Turkey in 1952, started painting professionally at six, and never attended formal art school. He ran a gallery on Incirlik Air Force Base painting American officers before immigrating to the United States in 1972. His focus from the beginning was filling a gap he saw firsthand: Black art wasn't being represented in galleries. So he carved out his own lane.
Two pieces from his African American Collection, The Last Supper and Baptism, have each sold over one million copies. Those prints hung in churches, barbershops, living rooms, and beauty salons across the country throughout the 1990s and 2000s. If you grew up in or near black spaces during that era, you've seen his work whether you knew his name or not.
His imagery has been placed in film and television productions for over 25 years. The Steve Harvey Show, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Barbershop, The Last OG, Malibu's Most Wanted, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. His painting of Malcolm X appeared on the back cover of Common's album Be.
This MLK lithograph sits within his Heritage Family Series, the same body of work that produced Four M's, March to Freedom, Fourteen Leaders, and Great Thinkers. Portraits of leaders made to be seen daily, not stored. The 1990s were a pivotal moment for Black art in American homes. Galleries largely weren't showing it. Museums largely weren't collecting it. Artists like Mavruk, along with community-driven distribution networks, put original art on walls in neighborhoods the fine art world was ignoring.
Hulis is a self-taught artist with over 50 years of output, millions of prints in circulation, and a screen presence most gallery artists would envy.
Size: 25" x 19".
