Tag: Black Artist

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Selma Burke

Selma Burke and her bust off Booker T. Washington, © Estate of Selma Burke.
Selma Burke and her bust off Booker T. Washington, © Estate of Selma Burke.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Selma Burke

Fallen Through The Cracks – Selma Burke

Selma Burke

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Selma Hortense Burke was born on December 31, 1900, in Mooresville, North Carolina. She was a sculptor and a member of the Harlem Renaissance movement. She described herself as “a people’s sculptor” and created many pieces of public art, often portraits of prominent African-American figures. She worked in a wide variety of media including wood, brass, alabaster, and limestone as she examined human emotion and familial relationships in expressionistic form.

Burke traveled to Europe twice in the 1930s, first on a Rosenwald fellowship to study sculpture in Vienna in 1933-34 and in 1936 where she met Henri Matisse, who praised her work. Burke began teaching for the Harlem Community Arts Center under the leadership of sculptor Augusta Savage. She would go on to work for the Works Progress Administration on the New Deal Federal Art Project.  In 1936, one of her works, a bust of Booker T. Washington was given to Frederick Douglass High School in Manhattan. Burke won a graduate school scholarship to Columbia University, where she would receive a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1941.

Selma Burke and her portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, © Estate of Selma Burke.
Selma Burke and her bust of Booker T. Washington, © Estate of Selma Burke.

Burke’s best-known work is a portrait honoring President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms. In 1943, she competed in a national contest to win a commission for the sculpture, created from sketches made during a 45-minute sitting with Roosevelt at the White House. Burke was a member of the first group of women – along with Louise Nevelson, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Isabel Bishop – to receive lifetime achievement awards from the Women’s Caucus for Art, in 1979.

Back in Mooresville, black children were banned from use of the public library. Burke donated a bust of a local doctor on the condition that the ban was removed. The town accepted. Selma Burke died at the age of 94 on August 29, 1995, in New Hope, Pennsylvania. (Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and Smithsonian).

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Beverly Buchanan

Beverly Buchanan, Orangeburg County Family House, © Estate of Beverly Buchanan.
Beverly Buchanan, Orangeburg County Family House, © Estate of Beverly Buchanan.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Beverly Buchanan

Fallen Through The Cracks – Beverly Buchanan

Beverly Buchanan

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Beverly Buchanan was born on October 8, 1940, in Fuquay, North Carolina. She was an artist whose work included painting, sculpture, video, and land art and is revered for her exploration of Southern vernacular architecture through her art. Her creations feature paintings and sculptures on the “shack,” an essential residence associated with poor people.

In 1962, Buchanan graduated from Bennett College, in Greensboro, North Carolina, a historically black women’s college, with a Bachelor of Science degree in medical technology. She went on to attend Columbia University, where she received a master’s degree in parasitology in 1968, and a master’s degree in public health in 1969. Buchanan decided not to medical school due to her desire to dedicate more time to her art. She wanted to “express the images, stories, and architecture of her African American childhood”.

Beverly Buchanan, Orangeburg County Family House, © Estate of Beverly Buchanan.
Beverly Buchanan, Tom’s House, 1995. © Estate of Beverly Buchanan.

In 1971, Buchanan enrolled in a class taught by Norman Lewis at the Art Students League in New York City where Lewis and Romare Bearden became friends and mentors. Her art takes the form of stone pedestals, bric-a-brac assemblages, funny poems, self-portraits, and sculptural shacks and possesses themes of identity, place, and collective memory. In 1981, Buchanan created Marsh Ruins, a temporal land art sculpture at “The Marshes of Glenn” near Saint Simons Island in coastal Georgia. She planted three concrete forms and covered them with layers of tabby, a mixture used in slave living quarters. This work bears witness to the unmarked histories of enslaved peoples. On July 4, 2015, Buchanan died in Ann Arbor, Michigan at seventy-four. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Hughie Lee-Smith

Hughie Lee-Smith, Aftermath, 1960. © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith.
Hughie Lee-Smith, Aftermath, 1960. © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Hughie Lee-Smith

Fallen Through The Cracks – Hughie Lee-Smith

Hughie Lee-Smith

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Hughie Lee-Smith was born on September 20, 1915, in Eustis, Florida. He was an artist and teacher whose paintings continually featured outlying subjects and desolate urban settings. His work references surrealism, social realism, and cubism within an indiscernible narrative. Critics have spoken of his work in comparison to artists Giorgio de Chirico and Edward Hopper.

He attended East Technical High School where he was president of the art club and ran track with Olympian  Jesse Owens. In 1938, Lee-Smith graduated with honors from the Cleveland School of Art and worked for the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He was concerned about the contribution art could make to the struggle for social justice and racial equality. 

Hughie Lee-Smith, Rooftops, 1961. © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith.
Hughie Lee-Smith, Rooftops, 1961. © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith.
Hughie Lee-Smith, Aftermath, 1960. © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith.
Hughie Lee-Smith, Aftermath, 1960. © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith.

While in the Navy for a 19-month stint, he was one of three African-American artists commissioned to do “morale-building paintings” of Black shipmen. He also painted a mural entitled History of the Negro in the U.S. Navy and did portraits of the first Black naval officers. Many years after winning a top prize for painting from the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1953, he recalled “I was no longer called a black artist, Negro artist, or colored boy. When I won that prize, all of a sudden, there was no longer a racial designation.” In 1994 he was commissioned to paint the official portrait of #DavidDinkins, former Mayor of New York City, for the New York City Hall. Hughie Lee-Smith died of cancer on February 23, 1999, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Lois Mailou Jones

Lois Mailou Jones, Self-Portrait 1940, © Smithsonian American Art Museum
Lois Mailou Jones, Self-Portrait 1940, © Smithsonian American Art Museum

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Lois Mailou Jones

Fallen Through The Cracks – Lois Mailou Jones

Lois Mailou Jones

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Lois Mailou Jones was born on November 3, 1905, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was an artist and educator who is often associated with the #HarlemRenaissance. She worked with different mediums, techniques, and influences and her work evolved in response to her extensive travels throughout Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. She felt that her greatest contribution to the art world was “proof of the talent of black artists” and wished to be known as a painter with no labels.

She founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute, a historically black prep school, in Sedalia, North Carolina. She prepared her students for a competitive arts career by inviting working designers and artists into her classroom for workshops. Jones developed as an artist through visits and summers spent in #Harlem during the onset of the Harlem Renaissance or New Negro Movement. In 1937, Jones received a fellowship to study in Paris at the #AcadémieJulian. She completed approximately 40 paintings and more than 30 watercolors during her time in France.

Lois Mailou Jones, Self-Portrait 1940, © Smithsonian American Art Museum
Painting by Lois Mailou Jones, © Estate of Lois Mailou Jones.
Painting by Lois Mailou Jones, © Estate of Lois Mailou Jones.

In 1954, Jones was a guest professor at Centre D’Art and Foyer des Artes Plastiques in Port-au-Prince, #Haiti, where the government invited her to paint Haitian people and landscapes. In 1955, she unveiled portraits of the Haitian president and his wife commissioned by United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1968, she documented work and interviews of contemporary Haitian artists for Howard University’s “The Black Visual Arts” research grant. In 1973, Jones received the “Women artists of the Caribbean and Afro-American Artists” grant from Howard University. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton collected one of her island seascapes, Breezy Day at Gay Head, while they were in the White House. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other collections around the world. Lois Mailou Jones died in 1998 at the age of 92. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Horace Pippin

Horace Pippin, School Studies, 1944
Horace Pippin, School Studies, 1944

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Horace Pippin

Fallen Through The Cracks – Horace Pippin

Horace Pippin

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Horace Pippin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1888. In World War I, Pippin served in K Company, the 3rd Battalion of the 369th infantry regiment, known as the famous Harlem Hellfighters, a predominately Black unit in a segregated US Army. He started painitngin the 1920s as a way to rehabilitate his injured arm. He began painting on stretched fabric and  burning designs into wood panels and adding emphasis to highlight specific components of the image. His first oil painting, The Ending of the War, Starting Home (1930–1933), depicts a scene informed by his experience at the Battle of Sechault, where he was shot.

Pippin’s oeuvre includes a variety of subjects and compositional strategies. His works include scenes inspired by his service in World War I, landscapes, portraits, and biblical subjects. Some of his most-prominent works address the U.S.’s history of slavery and racial segregation. His painting of John Brown Going to his Hanging (1942) is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and is part of a trilogy on the abolitionist sometimes credited with igniting the Civil War.

Horace Pippin, Uncle Tom, 1944
Horace Pippin, School Studies, 1944

In the eight years between his national debut in the Museum of Modern Art’s traveling exhibition “Masters of Popular Painting” (1938) and his death at the age of fifty-eight, Pippin’s recognition grew exponentially across the country and internationally. In the catalog for one of his memorial exhibitions in 1947, critic Alain Locke described Pippin as “a real and rare genius, combining folk quality with artistic maturity so uniquely as almost to defy classification.”

Pippin painted about 140 works, many in museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Barnes Foundation. He was the first African American artist to be the subject of a monograph, Selden Rodman’s Horace Pippin: A Negro Painter in America of 1947. The New York Times eulogized him as the “most important Negro painter” in American history. Horace Pippin died on July 6, 1946, in Chester County, PA.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis by Henry Rocher, c. 1870, Wikipedia Commons.
Edmonia Lewis by Henry Rocher, c. 1870, Wikipedia Commons.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Edmonia Lewis

Fallen Through The Cracks – Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Edmonia Lewis was born a free woman circa July 4, 1844, in Upstate New York. She was an American sculptor, of mixed African American and Native American heritage.  Lewis migrated to Boston in early 1864 to pursue her career as a sculptor. Her work was based in marble, focusing on incorporating themes relating to Black and Indigenous people of America in a Neoclassical-representation. One of her popular works, “Forever Free”, depicted a powerful image of a black man and woman emerging from the bonds of slavery.

She rose to prominence in the United States during the #CivilWar and was inspired by the lives of abolitionists and Civil War heroes. Lewis spent most of her adult career in #Rome, where Italy’s less pronounced racism allowed increased opportunities for black artists. “I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.” she quoted. 

Edmonia Lewis by Henry Rocher, c. 1870, Wikipedia Commons.
Edmonia Lewis, Hagar, 1875. ©Estate of Edmonia Lewis.
Edmonia Lewis, Hagar, 1875. ©Estate of Edmonia Lewis.

As a black artist, she had to be conscious of her stylistic choices, as her largely white audience often misread her work as self-portraiture. In order to avoid this, her female figures typically possess European features. A major highlight in her career was participating in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in which she created the 3,015-pound marble sculpture titled The Death of Cleopatra. Then in 1877, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to do his portrait. Edmonia Lewis died on September 17, 1907 in London, England.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Brittanica.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Brittanica.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Henry Ossawa Tanner

Fallen Through The Cracks – Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Henry Ossawa Tanner was born on June 21, 1859, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents gave him a middle name that commemorated the struggle at #Osawatomie, between pro-and anti-slavery activists. Tanner studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he would be the only black student. Tanner moved to Paris, in 1891 to study at the Académie Julian and ended up spending the rest of his life in France.

Tanner’s work featured mostly biblical themes and received critical praise for works such as The Resurrection of Lazarus and Daniel in the Lions’ Den (both created in 1896). Critics felt his work held a “powerful air of mystery and spirituality”. During World War I, Tanner worked for the Red Cross and painted images of African-American troops from the front lines of the war. Tanner’s Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (c. 1885) hangs in the Green Room at the White House and is the first painting by an African-American artist to have been purchased for the permanent collection of the White House.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Brittanica.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Brittanica.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Flight Into Egypt, 1923. © Estate of Henry Ossawa Tanner.

In his adopted home of France, in 1923 Tanner was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, the highest national order of merit. He considered this “citation by the French government to be the greatest honor of his illustrious career.” Tanner’s work was influential during his career; he has been called “the greatest African American painter to date.” He was the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim. Tanner died peacefully at his home in Paris, France, on May 25, 1937. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Vivian E. Browne

© Estate of Vivian E. Browne
© Estate of Vivian E. Browne

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Vivian E. Browne

Fallen Through The Cracks – Vivian E. Browne

Vivian E. Browne

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Vivian E. Browne was born on April 26, 1929, in Laurel, Florida. Browne was known for being an activist and professor, and for her political works showcasing her life as a black woman. “Black art is political. If it’s not political, it’s not black art”. Browne worked at Rutgers University in Newark from 1971 to 1992 as a faculty member of the Arts and Sciences department and served as a Fulbright panelist in 1990. 

In 2017, Browne was posthumously included in the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, organized by the Brooklyn Museum. In 2018, her work was also shown in Acts of Art and Rebuttal in 1971, an exhibition at Hunter College in NYC. It revisited the 1971 exhibition Rebuttal to the Whitney Museum Exhibition: Black Artists in Rebuttal organized by members of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. 

Vivian Browne, ‘Little Men #84’, 1966. © Estate of Vivian E. Browne
Vivian E. Browne, Bryanne, 1961. © Estate of Vivian E. Browne
Vivian E. Browne, Bryanne, 1961. © Estate of Vivian E. Browne

They protested the Whitney Museum’s refusal to appoint a Black curator for their survey of Contemporary Black Artists. Browne’s work was considered for the exhibition but was ultimately not included. Browne’s work is housed in public and private collections all over the United States. Most notably her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian, Museum Of Modern Art, and the Harry Belafonte & Rosa Parks private collections. According to her mother, Browne died July 23, 1993, at age 64.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: William “Bill” Traylor

William "Bill" Traylor, © Estate of William "Bill" Traylor.
William "Bill" Traylor, © Estate of William "Bill" Traylor.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: William “Bill” Traylor

Fallen Through The Cracks – William “Bill” Traylor

William “Bill” Traylor

#FallenThroughTheCracks – William “Bill” Traylor was born on April 1, circa 1853. He was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. At age 85, he found a pencil and a piece of cardboard and began to document his memories and observations. Between 1939 to 1942, he produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, AL.

Traylor drew and painted, mostly on discarded paper from the neighborhood. Traylor’s drawings express his experiences and observations from rural and urban life. His visual glossary includes images of people, symbols, animals, local landmarks, and more. Traylor’s complex and coded scenes evidence the balancing act that defined Black life during that period. He recorded these memories without drawing attention to himself for doing so. His work remains the only substantial surviving body of drawings and paintings by a man born into American slavery. No other artist captured the complex, drawn-out moment between slavery and civil rights. 

William “Bill” Traylor, © Estate of William “Bill” Traylor.
William "Bill" Traylor, Man and Large Dog (Verso: Man and Woman),” circa 1939–42. © Estate of William "Bill" Traylor.
William “Bill” Traylor, Man and Large Dog (Verso: Man and Woman),” circa 1939–42. © Estate of William “Bill” Traylor.

Today, Traylor has been regarded as one of the most prominent self-taught artists. Scholars who first labeled his work as “primitive” and “outsider” now regard him as a significant and prominent artist of the 20th century. Bill Traylor died on October 23, 1949, in Montgomery, AL.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage in her studio, © Estate of Augusta Savage
Augusta Savage in her studio, © Estate of Augusta Savage

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Augusta Savage

Fallen Through The Cracks – Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Augusta Savage was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida, on February 29, 1892. Her father was a poor Methodist minister who strongly opposed her early interest in art. During the mid-1920s when the #HarlemRenaissance was at its peak, Savage lived and worked in a small studio apartment where she earned a reputation as a portrait sculptor, completing busts of prominent personalities such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. She was one of the first artists who consistently dealt with black #physiognomy. 

Her best-known work of the 1920s was Gamin, an informal bust portrait of her nephew, for which she was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship to study in Paris in 1929. In 1931, Savage won a second Rosenwald fellowship, which allowed her to remain in Paris for an additional year. In 1934 she became the first African-American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. In 1937, she was appointed the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center and was one of four women and only two Black Americans to be commissioned by the New York World’s Fair of 1939 to create a sculpture symbolizing the musical contributions of African Americans. 

Augusta Savage, Gamin, 1929, © Estate of Augusta Savage, PAFA
Augusta Savage in her studio, © Estate of Augusta Savage

Savage created The Harp, inspired by the lyrics of James Weldon Johnson’s poem Lift Every Voice and Sing. The Harp was Savage’s largest work and her last major commission. Much of her work is in clay or plaster, as she could not often afford bronze. She launched the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, located in a basement on West 143rd Street in Harlem, with the help of a grant from the Carnegie Foundation. She opened her studio to anyone who wanted to paint, draw, or sculpt. Her many young students included the future nationally known artists of Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Gwendolyn Knight. Savage died on March 26, 1962, following a long bout with cancer. Savage is remembered today as a great artist, activist, and arts educator.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)