Aaron Douglas (1898 - 1979)
Born in Kansas in 1898, Douglas received
a BA in art from the University of
Nebraska. Douglas taught art in Kansas
City for a few years until he decided to
pursue a career as an artist and headed
to New York to earn his MA from
Columbia University. Douglas soon began
integrating African design in his work
which caught the attention of Alain
Locke, who later called Douglas the
"pioneering Africanist." Douglas designed
and illustrated Alain Locke's The New
Negro and contributed regularly to such
widely read journals as the NAACP's The
Crisis and The Urban League's
Opportunity.
In 1940 he moved to Nashville,
Tennessee, where he founded the Art
Department at Fisk University and taught
for 29 years.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/douglas.html
Into Bondage (1936)
Song of the Towers (1934)
Palmer Hayden (1890 - 1973)
Hayden was born Peyton Hedgeman in Wide
Water, Virginia in 1890. His artistic name,
Palmer Hayden, was taken from the corrupted
pronunciation of Peyton Hedgeman by a
commanding sergeant during World War I.
Hayden was among the first African American
artists to use African subjects and designs in his
painting. His 1926 still life Fetiche et Fleurs
highlights a Fang mask from Gabon and Bakuba
raffia cloth from the Congo. It won the
prestigious Harmon Foundation's Gold Award.
With the award and with a grant from a patron,
Hayden was able to continue his studies in
Paris, where he further explored his interest in
ethnic subject matter. He returned to the
United States in 1932 and worked steadily over
the next several years for the U.S. government,
including the U.S. Treasury Art Project and the
WPA. In his later works Hayden focused on the
African American experience, capturing both
rural gatherings in the South and the urban
milieu of New York.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/printable_pages/artfocus_03_print.html
Midsummer Night in Harlem (1938)
Janitor That Paints (1939)
Fetiche et Fleurs (1926)
Archibald Motley (1891 - 1981)
Born in 1891 in New Orleans and raised in
Chicago, Motley knew as a child that he
wanted to be an artist. He studied art at the
Institute of Chicago and in 1928, became the
second African American artist to have a solo
exhibition in New York City. Motley's early
artistic endeavors include Old Snuff Dipper, a
realistic portrait a working class southerner
that won a Harmon Foundation award. After
winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929,
Motley left for Paris where he painted
Parisian genre scenes, including Blues. When
Motley returned to Chicago in 1930, he began
painting portraits and genre scenes of the
African American community in Chicago's
Bronzeville neighborhood, home to most of
the city's African American population.
Although he never lived in Harlem, his
depiction of contemporary African American
social life identified him with the Harlem
Renaissance.
Nightlife (1943)
Jockey Club (1929)
Mending Socks (1924)
Old Snuff Dipper
Ellis Wilson (1899 - 1977)
Ellis Wilson, whose father was also an artist, was
born in Mayfield, Kentucky in 1899. Wilson went
north to Chicago in the early 1920s to study and
participate in the African American arts
movement that was emerging in urban centers.
He graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in
1923 and later moved to New York, where he
participated in WPA art programs and exhibited
with the Harmon Foundation, an organization
that promoted the works of African American
artists. In 1944 Wilson was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship to travel in the South
and paint ordinary African Americans at work
and at home. During this time he painted African
Americans making turpentine, harvesting
tobacco, and selling goods at the open air
markets of Charleston, South Carolina. Wilson
also drew his inspiration from his travels to Haiti,
where he painted peasants at work. Wilson is
probably best known for his painting, Funeral
Procession, which was displayed in the living
room in the popular television sit-com, THE
COSBY SHOW.
Funeral Procession (1950s)
Field Workers (1948-1951)
Jacob Lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Jacob Lawrence, one of the most important
artists of the 20th century, was born in 1917
and is best known for his series of narrative
paintings depicting important moments in
African American history. Lawrence was
introduced to art when in his early teens,
Lawrence's mother enrolled him in Utopia
Children's Center, which provided an afterschool art program in Harlem. By the mid1930s, he was regularly participating in art
programs at the Harlem Art Workshop and
the Harlem Community Art Center where he
was exposed to leading African American
artists of the time, including Augusta Savage
and Charles Alton, the director of the Harlem
Art Workshop and, later, professor of art at
Howard University.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/lawrence.html
The Library (1960)
The Seamstress, 1946
Fulton and Nostrand , 1958
Norman Lewis
Norman Lewis, born in 1909 in New York,
was the first major African American
abstract expressionist. Lewis, like fellow
artist, Jacob Lawrence attended the art
workshops in Harlem. At the art centers
Lewis studied African art and was
introduced to Howard University
professor, Alain Locke's ideas about art,
which Locke believed, should derive from
African themes and aesthetics. However
Lewis saw limitations in the New Negro
ideals and questioned its effectiveness in
expressing his own identity and interests
of the African American community.
Lewis later moved from abstract
figuration to modernism, as exemplified
by artists Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo
Picasso. His paintings from this time are
devoid of realistic imagery and focused
more on conceptual expression, often
referring to African American settings and
culture. Lewis, always active in the art
community, in the 1960s was a founding
member of the Spiral Group, a group of
African American artists who sought to
contribute through their art to the civil
rights movement.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/nlewis.html
Yellow Hat (1936)
Norman Lewis, Confrontation, 1972
Phantasy II. 1946
Augusta Savage (1892 - 1962)
Augusta Savage, who was born in Green
Cove Springs, Florida in 1892, began
molding clay at an early age. Despite
great opposition from her family, Savage
was determined to pursue a career in the
arts as a sculptor. She moved to New York
to study at Cooper Union, where she was
soon commissioned to create a portrait
bust of W.E.B. Du Bois and other African
American leaders including Marcus
Garvey. In 1924 the sculpture of her
nephew, Gamin, won the Julius
Rosenwald Fellowship which gave her the
opportunity to study in Paris for one year.
After returning home from Europe,
Savage shared her art and experiences
through teaching in the Harlem
community. In 1932, Augusta established
the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts to
provide adult art education. She also later
became the first director of the Harlem
Community Arts Center, where she
played a crucial role in the development
of young African American artists. This art
center became a model for others across
the country, including Chicago's
Southside Community Art Center.
Gamin (1929)
The Harp (1939)
HARLEM GIRL (LENORE), 1935
Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)
One of the most famous musicians of
the Harlem Renaissance was Louis
Armstrong. Having come from a poor
family in New Orleans, Armstrong
began to perform with bands in small
clubs, and play at funerals and parades
around town in New Orleans.
Louis Armstrong is one of the most
appreciated jazz artists of the Harlem
Renaissance, and of all times. People
learned to appreciate both jazz, and
African American music even more,
because of this man. Armstrong played
music up until the day he died at 70
years old, on July 6, 1971.
Billie Holiday(Lady Day)
(1915-1959)
During the 1950’s Billie Holiday rose as a
social phenomenon. Born Eleanora
Fagan grew up in Baltimore. As a
teenager she began singing in jazz clubs.
A musical legend Billie Holiday died at
the age of 44. She pioneered a new way
of manipulating phrasing and tempo.
She co-wrote a few songs that became
jazz standards. "God Bless the Child,"
"Don't Explain," "Fine and Mellow," and
"lady Sings the Blues."
Chick Webb (1905-1939)
Born William Henry Webb, know as
Chick Webb was and American jazz ad
swing music drummer. Born in
Baltimore, he suffered from
tuberculosis of the spine. He worked
as a newspaper boy to save enough
money to buy drums and he first
played professionally at age 11. At the
age of 17 he move to New York City
and began leading his own band in
Harlem.
Drumming legend Buddy Rich cited
Webb’s technique and performances
as heavily influential on his own
drumming and referred to Webb as
“the daddy of them all.” At the Savory
in “Battle of the Bands” Chicks often
won and was deemed “King of Swing.”