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precise, forceful works of his Talledega murals and of the Golden Gate Insurance Company mural, in Los Angeles.

I believe Hale's finest contribution lies in his murals and in his last paintings, so fluent, so full bodied, and so penetrated with colorful rhythms.  These works have affinities with Abstract Expressionism,  As with Rothko and De Kooning, Hale is one of the outstanding exponents of that style.  A classical sensibility informs these works, and I realized this when examples of these paintings were first shown, on 57th Street, at the Bertha Schaffer Gallery.  And, of course, afterwards at many gallery and museum exhibits, culminating in Hales' great retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

In the later paintings the poetry of rhythm and color transcends the material facts of canvass and oil paint and send the painter's message of beauty home to the heart.  In a keenly perceptive work that I greatly admire, "Ancestral Memories" we see a red Africanesque face glowing in the stately images of the painting.  These are the works of a sensitive man with a deep awareness of his artistic responsibility--works in which Hale expressed what he though and felt and what he respected and appreciated.

I will not attempt to analyze these technical aspects of Hale's art any further.  Hale's knowledge of painting and drawing would have been in vain had he not been moved in his mind and heart, not only by what is apparent in his paintings, but, also, by their inner meanings and mysteries that are hardly subject to analysis.  He found the music and color of form--where?--we need not attempt to discover, for only the expectations of the soul, were that possible, could help us.

We are here, then, not just to say our farewells, but convene, in a larger sense, to celebrate the enduring achievements of a distinguished artist and friend.

As his work lives in us, it also enriches our lives.