#african-american artist

[newyorkthegoldenage]

William H. Johnson, Blind Singer, ca. 1940. Screenprint with tempera additions.

Johnson was among the foremost painters of African-American life during the Harlem Renaissance. Born in South Carolina and educated in fine arts in New York and Provincetown, Johnson spent most of his time from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s in Europe, where he was influenced by Post-Impressionism and Expressionism. After achieving critical acclaim abroad, he returned to New York permanently in 1938 under the threat of war and with a desire to reconnect to his roots. The move produced a dramatic change in his work. Assigned by the government's Works Progress Administration to teach at the Harlem Community Art Center, Johnson became immersed in the sights, sounds, and people of New York's African-American community, which he captured in compositions of flat shapes, patterned designs, and brilliant colors that were distinctly modernist in their simplicity and directness.

During his lifetime, Johnson created more than seventy-five prints. While in Europe he produced woodcuts and linoleum cuts, usually with hand coloring, inspired by the raw power of German Expressionism. After returning to New York, he took up screenprint and pochoir, techniques that suited his new embrace of simplified forms and bold colors. He printed these works on assorted found papers and often completed his images by hand with tempera, making each print slightly different from the next. He frequently experimented with subjects by printing compositional variants and also rendering them in drawing and painting, each format enriching the other, but with the printed versions the most simplified of all.

Notable among Johnson's New York prints are those that capture the essence of Harlem's fashion, music, and dance. This print, entitled Blind Singer, shows a pair of musicians in an open-air performance that was common on the city's bustling streets. The composition's flatness, pure color, and orchestrated angularity endow this still image with a sense of rhythmic motion and dynamic energy. --Judy Hecker, in Deborah Wye, Artists and Prints: Masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art

Photo & text: MoMA

[theaskew]

Alison Saar (American, b. 1956, lives and works in Los Angeles), Compton Nocturne, 2012. Three-colour lithograph, 25 1/8 × 19 1/8 in. | 63.8 × 48.6 cm.

[mahgnib]

Ralph Earl, “Houses Fronting New Milford Green”, circa 1796

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (3/1/23) Elizabeth Catlett (African-American, 1915-2012) Mother and Child (1977) Bronze w/ greenish-brown patina, 39.4 cm. high Granary Gallery, West Tisbury MA

Elizabeth Catlett was an African-American artist who explored themes relating to race and feminism in her range of sculpture, paintings, and prints. Like her peer Norman Lewis, Catlett highlighted the struggle of black people with her art. Responding to segregation and the fight for civil rights, Catlett’s depictions of sharecroppers and activists showed the influence of Primitivism and Cubism. “I have always wanted my art to service my people —- to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential,” she once stated.

For more of this artist's work, see this MWW Special Collection: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1843108375794523&type=3

[abwwia]

Barbara Jones-Hogu (1938-2017)

#bornOnThisDay Barbara Jones-Hogu (1938-2017) was an African-American artist best known for her work with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and for co-founding the artists' collective AfriCOBRA. Via Wikipedia #PalianSHOW

Barbara Jones-Hogu April 17, 1938 – November 14, 2017was an African-American artist best known for her work with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and for co-founding the artists’ collective AfriCOBRA. Via Wikipedia (photo) Jones-Hogu worked in a variety of printing techniques, including woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and screen prints. Her work dealt directly with social and…

[nemfrog]

I have given the world my songs. Elizabeth Catlett. 1947.

West Harlem Art Fund

[fyblackwomenart]

"African woman" by Judith Scholtz on INPRNT

[thefugitivesaint]

Thomas Blackshear II, 'Beauty and The Beast', ''Spectrum'' #2, 1995

[oncanvas]

Mars Dust, Alma Thomas, 1972

Acrylic on canvas 69 ¼ × 57 ⅛ in. (175.9 × 145.1 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY, USA

[sbrown82]

Linda Martell - "Color Him Father" (1970)

**Beyoncé's latest album 'Cowboy Carter' spotlights Linda Martell, a pioneer and trailblazer who paved the way for Black country music artists, as she was the first commercially successful Black female artist in the genre.

[agelessphotography]

The Invisible Man, Harlem, New York, Gordon Parks, 1952

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Jacob Lawrence, Harlem Diner, 1938. Water-pressed tempera on paper, laid on board.

Photo: NY Historical Society/Art Students League

[theaskew]

William H. Johnson (African American 1901-1970), Standing Female Nude with Leg on Chair, ca. 1939-1940. Pen and ink and ink wash on paper, 24 1/8 x 18 1/4 in. | 61.3 x 46.4 cm. (Source:  Smithsonian American Art Museum)

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Charles Ethan Porter (1847-1923) "Autumn Landscape" (1890-1891) Oil on canvas Located in the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (2/3/23) Aaron Douglas (African-American, 1899-1979) Building More Stately Mansions (1944) Oil on canvas The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Douglas's art fused modernism with ancestral African images, including fetish motifs, masks, and artifacts. His work celebrates African American versatility and adaptability, depicting people in a variety of settings —- from rural and urban scenes to churches to nightclubs. His illustrations in books by leading black writers established him as the black artist of the period. Later in his career, Douglas founded the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The style Aaron Douglas developed in the 1920s synthesized aspects of modern European, ancient Egyptian, and West African art. His best-known paintings are semi-abstract, and feature flat forms, hard edges, and repetitive geometric shapes. Bands of color radiate from the important objects in each painting, and where these bands intersect with other bands or other objects, the color changes.

Douglas is one of the featured artists in this MWW exhibit/gallery: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.343798162392226&type=3

[the-cricket-chirps]

Betye Saar, Rojo Toro, 1964

Betye Saar, The Beast that Pounds the Devil's Dust, 1964