Eminent sculptor Melvin Edwards, whose works in steel went beyond abstraction, died on March 30 at his home in Baltimore. He was 88. Many art lovers recall his exhibition of works at City Hall Park in 2021, especially “Song of the Broken Chains,” which, in many ways, was emblematic of his style and his historical African American references.
Although his career began long before he became immersed in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and in his association with, and later marriage to, poet Jayne Cortez, Edwards was always interested in tying things together, and he did so most meaningfully once he delved into African metallurgy.
Melvin Edwards’s stainless steel sculpture, “Confirmation,” in Jamaica, Queens, in front of Joseph P. Addabbo Federal Building. (Herb Boyd photo) 
“Homage to My Father and the Spirit” (1969) at Cornell University in 2025. (Public domain photos) 
“Homage to My Father and the Spirit” (1969) at Cornell University in 2025. (Public domain photos)
One of his works, expressive of this innovative technique, is “Seven,” which is featured in Black New York Artists of the 20th Century, selections from the Schomburg Center Collections. Here, the Texas-born artist, educated in California, welded and leaned a heart-shaped figure against what could be an anvil. In the description of the piece, there’s a brief bio noting his numerous exhibitions and fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (1970, 1984) and the Guggenheim Foundation (1975), as well as a Fulbright Fellowship to Zimbabwe (1988–1989). His works often featured found objects that he shaped and conjoined to his creative imagination. In his vast collection, locks, horseshoes, screws, and other metal objects often abound, to say nothing of chains, a shovel, a monkey wrench, barbed wire, and even a pair of scissors.
Before he devoted himself full-time to art, Edwards was a college athlete who excelled on the gridiron at the University of Southern California. At first, his interest was primarily in painting, but soon he gravitated to sculpture and began what became his signature “Lynch Fragments,” symbolizing the history of African Americans being brutalized by a racist culture. In 1972, his teaching career began at the Livingston College campus of New Jersey’s Rutgers University. He later became a professor and taught there for 22 years.
In 1978, he revisited his work on “Lynch Fragments” and presented it at the Studio Museum. This was followed by “The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s” (1990) and “Sculpted, Etched, and Cut” (2011).
Two years after this installation, his wife, Jayne Cortez, died. During our conversation a year later, at a tribute to her, he was as reticent as ever, preferring always to let his art speak, and it spoke volumes.