American, 20th century, male.
Born 28 November 1907, in Charlotte (North Carolina); died 27 April 1977, in New York.
Painter, sculptor, illustrator, lithographer. Murals.
Groups: Spiral, 306.
Charles Alston moved to New York with his mother in 1914, after his father died. Alston received his BA and MA (...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 13 November 1930, in Plainview (Georgia); died 10 November 2006, in New York (New York).
Painter, collage artist, installation artist, sculptor, photographer, illustrator, draughtsman, watercolourist, print artist. Figures, portraits, interiors with figures, landscapes, animals.
Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, Rhino Horn Group
African-American artist Benny Andrews was the second of ten children born to George and Viola Andrews in the small rural farming town of Plainview, Georgia. He served in the US Air Force during the Korean War. Upon his honorable discharge, Andrews moved to Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating with a BFA in 1958. He then moved to New York, where, in 1969, with Cliff Joseph and Valerie Maynard, he founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), the aim of which was to force the major museums to include work by African-American artists in their shows. Andrews helped organize protests of several major museum shows including the Whitney Museum of American Art’s ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 2 February 1914, in Washington (North Carolina), 1919, according to some sources; died 1977.
Sculptor, print artist, ceramicist, illustrator.
William E. Artis studied at the University of Syracuse, New York, New York State University and the Art Students League, New York. He was also a student of Augusta Savage at the Harlem Community Art Center, New York. Artis expressed his humanist ideals by depicting impassive faces in a purified style, combining African and classical sculpture....
American, 20th century, male.
Born 2 September 1911, in Charlotte (North Carolina); died 12 March 1988, in New York.
Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, lithographer, screen printer, engraver, collage artist, newspaper cartoonist, illustrator, art theorist. Religious subjects, figure compositions, local figures. Humorous cartoons, frontispieces, stage sets...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 13 April 1924, in Gastonia (North Carolina); died February 2001.
Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, print artist, illustrator. Figures, scenes with figures. Murals.
John Biggers studied at the Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia. From 1943 to 1945, he served in the US navy. After the war, he studied under Viktor Lowenfeld at Pennsylvania State University, first earning a BS, and then an MS in ...
American, 19th century.
Born 1841, in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania); died 1918, in St Paul (Minnesota).
Painter, draughtsman, lithographer, cartographer, illustrator. Landscapes.
Grafton Tyler Brown was the son of emancipated slaves who had come from Maryland in 1837. He moved with them to San Francisco in 1861...
American, 20th century, female.
Born 29 April 1929, in Laurel (Florida); died 23 July 1993, in New York.
Painter, print artist, illustrator. Figures, portraits, landscapes, still-lifes.
Vivian E. Browne studied at Hunter College, New York, earning a BS in 1950, and an MA in 1959...
American, 20th century, female.
Born 1 November 1917, in St Rose (Louisiana).
Sculptor (bronze), engraver, painter, illustrator, watercolourist, writer. Figures, portraits, genre scenes.
Margaret T.G. Burroughs studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Illinois State University. In 1961, Burroughs and her husband founded the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art at their home in Chicago. The museum remains under Burroughs' directorship, but was later renamed the DuSable Museum of African American History. In ...
American, 20th century, female.
Active in France.
Born 26 June 1939, in Philadelphia.
Sculptor, painter, print artist, illustrator, writer.
Barbara Chase-Riboud received her BFA from Temple University, Philadelphia, and her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. She also studied in Rome. She has lived and worked in Paris since ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 19 June 1914, in Brooklyn (New York City); died 10 November 2005.
Painter, draughtsman, illustrator, lithographer, screen printer. Figures. Murals.
Groups: Spiral, 306.
Ernest Crichlow's family were immigrants from the Barbados. He studied illustration at New York University and the Art Students League, New York, and worked for the Federal Art Project (the WPA programme designed to assist artists) during the Great Depression. In ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 20 March 1910, in North Plainfield (New Jersey).
Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, print artist, illustrator. Religious subjects, figures, figure compositions, genre scenes, street scenes. Murals, church decoration, religious furnishings.
Harlem Renaissance.
Allan Rohan Crite studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and then at Harvard University Extension School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the Depression, he worked for the Federal Arts Project. He lived in Boston since he was one year old. From the early 1940s, Crite set out to paint the life of the black community in Roxbury and South End, Boston. He also created a number of religious works for churches in the 1930s and illustrated religious books. In particular, he published two books of Negro Spirituals with Harvard University Press, ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 1938, in Chicago.
Painter, draughtsman, print artist, illustrator.
AfriCobra Group.
Murry DePillars earned his BA and MA at Roosevelt University, Chicago, and his PhD from Pennsylvania State University. He served in the US Army during the Vietnam War. He is a member of AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), which calls for an art entirely directed towards the African-American community. He moved to Richmond, Virginia in ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 15 December 1937, in Pine Bluff (Arkansas); died 2004.
Painter, print artist, illustrator. Figures, portraits, scenes with figures. Murals.
AfriCobra Group.
Jeff Donaldson studied at the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and Northwestern University, where he obtained his PhD in art history in ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 26 May 1899, in Topeka (Kansas); died 3 February 1979, in Nashville (Tennessee).
Painter, draughtsman, watercolourist, illustrator. Murals, posters.
Harlem Renaissance.
306 Group.
Aaron Douglas studied at the University of Nebraska School of Fine Arts, Lincoln, Nebraska, where he obtained his BA in ...
(b Topeka, KS, April 27, 1899; d Nashville, TN, Feb 3, 1979).
American painter and illustrator. He was a leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s (see African American art §I 2.). He studied at the University of Nebraska and then in Paris with Charles Despiau and Othon Friesz (1925–31). Douglas was the earliest African American artist consciously to include African imagery in his work, which emphasized the creativity and continuity of African American culture, despite slavery and segregation. He was, however, criticized by his contemporaries for his idealism. In 1934, under the sponsorship of the Public Works of Art project (see United States of America, §XII), he designed a number of murals, including four panels depicting Aspects of Negro Life for the Schomburg Library in Harlem (New York, Pub. Lib.); this work and such others as Judgment Day (1939; USA, priv. col., see exh. cat., no. 99) and Building More Stately Mansions...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 19 May 1933, in Brooklyn; died 25 August 2003.
Painter, draughtsman, sculptor, illustrator. Figures, figure compositions, scenes with figures.
Tom Feelings trained at the Cartoonists and Illustrators' School, New York (1951-1953) and the School of Visual Art, New York, (...
American, 19th – 20th century, female.
Born 9 June 1877, in Philadelphia; died 13 March 1968.
Sculptor (plaster/bronze), illustrator.
Harlem Renaissance.
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School for Industrial Arts (today Philadelphia College of Art) from 1894 to 1899 and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 1935, in Austin (Texas).
Draughtsman, painter, lithographer, illustrator. Animals, plants.
Marvin Harden studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a teacher.
His work is characterised by very small drawings of plants and animals within larger, geometric compositions, creating a poetic effect in which the form depicted is magnified by the effects of perspective. He does not colour his drawings, which are usually in pencil....
American, 20th century, male.
Born 1931, in New York.
Painter (mixed media), watercolourist, draughtsman, print artist, sculptor, illustrator. Figure compositions, figures, nudes, landscapes. Murals.
Spiral Group.
Alvin Hollingsworth was born into a family of West Indian origin. He studied at the Art Students League and New York City College, graduating in ...
American, 20th century, female.
Born 25 June 1942, in Oakland (California).
Painter, engraver, lithographer, monotype artist, illustrator. Figures, scenes with figures.
Margo Humphrey lived her formative years in California, studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Merritt College, Oakland, then Stanford University. She taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz before joining the staff of the University of Maryland. She is best known for her lithographs whose elaborate compositions are set in primary colours and which account for the artist's environment (objects, persons, vegetation, architectures). In the 1960s, she turned her attention to African history. Her stylised representation sometimes tends towards Abstraction, for instance in ...
