This painting by Arthur Monroe owes its title to an opera composed by ragtime legend Scott Joplin. Written in 1910, Joplin's "Treemonisha" celebrates African-American music and culture while stressing that education is the salvation of African Americans. The heroine and symbolic educator is Treemonisha, who runs into trouble with a local band of conjurers, who kidnap her after she shows her community that the conjurers have been preying on their ignorance and superstition.

Arthur Monroe (b. 1935—d. 2019) was a dedicated adherent to abstract expressionism throughout his life, refining his craft and his personal relationship to painting over the course of seven decades. This painting from the 1980s underscores Monroe’s timeless formal sensitivities: rhythmic, almost calligraphic gestures interwoven with bold blocks of carefully controlled color. In a late-career interview with StartArt, Monroe identified this particular size (96x84) as being a point of particular interest to him: a scale at which you can fall into the painting, feel surrounded by it, feel captured by it.
 
Originally born in Harlem and raised in Brooklyn, Monroe rubbed shoulders with many luminaries of the New York Abstract Expressionists including Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock. Following his service in the Korean War, Monroe relocated to San Francisco, where he connected with the Beat poets and other Bay Area figureheads. He was a pioneer for live-work artist ran spaces and opened The Oakland Cannery in 1967, which he ran until his passing.