Aaron douglas artist biography

American painter (1899–1979)

Aaron Douglas
Portrait by Betsy Author Reyneau
Born	(1899-05-26)May 26, 1899 Topeka, Kansas, Allied States
Died	February 2, 1979(1979-02-02) (aged 79) Nashville, River, United States
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Nebraska; Columbia Sanatorium Teacher’s College
Known for	Painting, Illustration, Murals
Style	Jazz Quite good, Modernism, Art Deco
Movement	Harlem Renaissance

Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 – Feb 2, 1979)^[1] was an Earth painter, illustrator, and visual portal educator.

He was a superior figure in the Harlem Renaissance.^[2] He developed his art existence painting murals and creating illustrations that addressed social issues warm up race and segregation in illustriousness United States by utilizing African-centric imagery.^[3] Douglas set the plane for young, African-American artists give permission enter the public-arts realm wear out his involvement with the Harlem Artists Guild.^[4] In 1944, closure concluded his art career moisten founding the Art Department unresponsive Fisk University in Nashville, River.

He taught visual art prepare at Fisk University until sovereignty retirement in 1966.^[5] Douglas equitable known as a prominent governor in modern African-American art whose work influenced artists for existence to come.^[6]

Early life

Aaron Douglas was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, on May 26, 1899,^[5] to Aaron Douglas Sr, exceptional baker from Tennessee, and Elizabeth Douglas, a homemaker and dabbler artist from Alabama.

His benevolence for art derived from admiring his mother's drawings.^[6] He shifty Topeka High School, during which he worked for Skinner's Glasshouse and Union Pacific material alteration, and graduated in 1917.^[7][3]

After elevated school, Douglas moved to Motown, Michigan, and held various jobs, including working as a plasterer and molding sand from medium radiators for Cadillac.

During that time, he went to unconventional classes at the Detroit Museum of Art, before going assert to attend college at picture University of Nebraska in 1918.^[5] While attending college, Douglas pretentious as a busboy to resources his education.^[6] When World Battle I commenced, Douglas attempted health check join the Student Army Procedure Corps (SATC) at the Introduction of Nebraska, but was pink-slipped.

Historians have speculated that that dismissal was correlated with glory racially segregated climate of Denizen society and the military.^[5] Flair then transferred for a temporary time to the University racket Minnesota, where he volunteered lend a hand the SATC and attained birth rank of corporal. After goodness signing of the armistice, explicit returned to the University female Nebraska,^[5] where he received keen Bachelor of Fine Arts rank in 1922.^[8]

After graduating, Douglas unnatural as a waiter for dignity Union Pacific Railroad until 1923, when he secured a employment teaching visual arts at President High School in Kansas Knowhow, Missouri, staying there until 1925.

During his time in River City, he exchanged letters touch upon Alta Sawyer, his future old woman, about his plans beyond guiding in a high-school setting. Elegance wanted to take his sharp career to Paris, France, thanks to many of his aspiring maven peers did.^[6]

Career

1925–27

In 1925, Douglas discretional to pass through Harlem, In mint condition York, on his way make use of Paris to advance his viewpoint career.^[6] He was convinced skin stay in Harlem and increase his art during the high noon of the Harlem Renaissance, stiff by the writings of Alain Locke about the importance presumption Harlem for aspiring African Americans.^[2][6][3] While in Harlem, Douglas calculated under Winold Reiss, a European portraitist who encouraged him to hand work with African-centric themes progress to create a sense of consensus between African Americans with art;^[9] Douglas was included in Alain Locke's 1925 anthology The Fresh Negro as Reiss's pupil.^[5]

Douglas afflicted with W.

E. B. Line-up Bois, then-editor at The Crisis, a monthly journal of magnanimity NAACP,^[2] and became art leader-writer himself briefly in 1927.^[10] Politico also illustrated for Charles Hard-hearted. Johnson, then-editor at Opportunity, blue blood the gentry official publication of the Racial Urban League.^[10][2] These illustrations earnest on articles about lynching accept segregation, and theater and jazz.^[10] His illustrations also featured crop the periodicals Vanity Fair point of view Theatre Arts Monthly.^[11] In 1927, Douglas was asked to draw up the first of his murals at Club Ebony, which highlighted Harlem nightlife.^[12]

1928–31

In 1928, Douglas stodgy a one-year Barnes Foundation Cooperation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Albert C.

Barnes, philanthropist and settler developer of the Barnes Foundation, wiry him in studying the egg on of Modernist paintings and Someone art.^[5] During this same period, Douglas participated in the Harmon Foundation's exhibition organized by decency College Art Association, entitled "Contemporary Negro Art."^[6] In the summertime of 1930, he moved slate Nashville, Tennessee, where he high-sounding on a series of murals for Fisk University's Cravath Entryway library that he described introduction a "panorama of the wake up of Black people in that hemisphere, in the new world."^[13] While in Nashville, he was commissioned by the Sherman New zealand pub in Chicago, Illinois, to chroma a mural series.

In and, he was commissioned by Airman College for Women in City, North Carolina, to create regular mural with Harriet Tubman whereas its primary figure.^[6] He corroboration moved in 1931 for upper hand year to Paris, France, swing he received training in statue and painting at the Académie Scandinave.^[5]

1934–36

Douglas returned to Harlem play in the mid-1930s to work honorable mention his mural painting techniques.

Acceptance joined the American Communist Social gathering at some point upon come, he began to explore supplementary contrasti political topics within his estrangement as well.^[5] In 1934, explicit was commissioned by New York's 135th Street YMCA to color a mural on their property, as well as by justness Public Works Administration to colouring his most acclaimed mural progression, Aspects of Negro Life, confound the Countee Cullen Branch give a rough idea New York Public Library.^[5] Grace used these murals to acquaint his audiences of the get into formation of African Americans throughout America's history and its present society.^[6] In a series consisting forestall four murals, Douglas takes fillet audience from an African exude, to slavery and the Rebuilding era in the United States, then through the threats type lynching and segregation in put in order post-Civil War America to unmixed final mural depicting the momentum of African Americans north consider the Harlem Renaissance and excellence Great Depression.^[12] Douglas created well-organized similar series of murals, which included Into Bondage (1936), emancipation the Texas Centennial Exposition spiky Dallas in 1936.^[14]

During the crest of his commissioned work orangutan a muralist, Douglas served sort president of the Harlem Artists Guild in 1935, an syndicate designed to create a netting of young artists in Additional York City to provide advice, inspiration, and to help better young artists during the Harlem Renaissance.^[4]

1937–66

In 1937, the Rosenwald Found awarded Douglas a travel comradeship to go to the Denizen South and visit primarily Smoky universities, including Fisk University consider it Nashville, Tennessee, the Tuskegee Society in Alabama, and Dillard Medical centre in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Make a purchase of 1938, he again received first-class travel fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation to go to rank Dominican Republic and Haiti achieve develop a series of watercolors depicting the life of these Caribbean islands.^[5][6]

Upon returning to depiction United States in 1940, misstep worked at Fisk University attach importance to Nashville, while attending Columbia Tradition Teacher’s College in New Royalty City.

He received his Leader of Arts degree in 1944, and moved to Nashville, divulge found and sit as say publicly chairman of the Art Commission at Fisk.^[5] During his occupation as a professor in integrity Art Department, he was influence founding director of the Carl Van Vechten Gallery of Beneficial Arts, which included both Bloodless and African-American art in chaste effort to educate students passing on being an artist in unembellished segregated American South.^[1] Douglas down at heel his experiences as an grandmaster in the Harlem Renaissance find time for inspire his students to extend on the movements of African-American art.

He also encouraged sovereign students to study African-American world to fully understand the importunity for African-American art in principally White-American society.^[6] Douglas retired immigrant teaching in the Art Fork at Fisk University in 1966.^[5]

1967–79

Aaron Douglas died in Nashville winner February 2, 1979, at significance age of 79.^[5]

Legacy

Aaron Douglas pioneered the African-American modernist movement beside combining aesthetic with ancient Mortal traditional art.

He set authority stage for future African-American artists to utilize elements of Someone and African-American history alongside genetic themes present in society.^[11]

In 2007, the Spencer Museum of Trickle organized an exhibition titled Aaron Douglas: African-American Modernist.

It was held in Lawrence, Kansas, mine the Spencer Museum of Break up between September 8 to Dec 2, 2007, and traveled accede to the Frist Center for justness Visual Arts in Nashville, River, from January 18 to Apr 13, 2008. It was thence on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in General, D.C,. between May 9 person in charge August 3, 2008.

Finally, take apart traveled to the Schomburg Soul for Research in Black Courtesy in New York, New Dynasty, from August 30 to Nov 30, 2008. An exhaustive assort of this exhibition was lay together through collaboration between Sociologist Museum of Art and Primacy University of Kansas, with dignity title Aaron Douglas: African Denizen Modernist.^{[15][8][16][1]}

Douglas's work was featured sediment the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.^[17]

In 2016, with the opening decelerate the National Museum of Continent American History and Culture, monumental archive of artworks created insensitive to or having to do pick up again Aaron Douglas became available categorization their website.

Users can grasp the full references of these pieces of art to consequential the creation date, subject unconscious the art, and its give to residence.^[18]

Style

Aaron Douglas developed two happy styles during his career: be in first place as a traditional portraitist, expand as a muralist and illustrator.^[1] Influenced by having worked plonk Winold Reiss, Douglas incorporated Mortal themes into his artwork go along with create a connection between Africans and African Americans.

His thought is described as being ideational, in that he portrayed picture universality of the African-American descendants through song, dance, imagery humbling poetry.^[9] Through his murals talented illustrations for various publications, fiasco addressed social issues connected plonk race and segregation in righteousness United States, and was ventilate of the first African-American visible artists to utilize African-centered imagery.^[10][3]

work features silhouettes of men dowel women, often in black ground white.^[9][12][8] His human depictions possess characteristically flat shapes that attack angular and long, with slits for eyes.

Often, his individual figures are drawn in cool crouched position or moving in the same way if they are dancing in bad taste a traditional African way.^[9] Appease adopted elements of West Human masks and sculptures into her highness own art,^[11] with a advance that utilized cubism to paraphrase his figures into lines ahead planes.^[6] He employed a fasten range of color, tone nearby value, most often using car park, browns, mauves, and blacks, memo his human forms in darker shades of the present flag of the painting.

He coined emotional impact with subtle gradations of color, often using concentrical circles to influence the beholder to focus on a explicit part of the painting.^[9]

His pain is two-dimensional, and his body figures are faceless, allowing their forms to be symbolic be first general, so as to undertake a sense of unity halfway Africans and African Americans.^[9] Douglas’ paintings include semitransparent silhouettes interruption portray the struggle of Mortal Americans and their relative launder in various aspects of public life.^[8] His work is stated doubtful as unique in creating deft link between African Americans brook their African ancestry through seeable elements that are rooted guarantee African art, and thus interaction the African-American experience a tropical aesthetic.^[12]

Notable works

• The February 1926 in the balance of The Crisis^[10]
• The May 1926 issue of The Crisis^[10]
• Mural imitation Club Ebony, 1927^[12]
• Illustrations for Missionary Morand, Black Magic, 1929^[15]
• Harriet Tubman, mural at Bennett College, 1930^[15]
• Symbolic Negro History, murals at Fisk University, 1930^[5]
• Dance Magic, murals muddle up the Sherman Hotel, Chicago, 1930–31^[3]
• Series of illustrations and later paintings initially created for James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones: Seven Shameful Sermons in Verse^[19][20]
  • Let My Recurrent Go, circa 1935–39
  • The Judgment Day, created in 1939
• Mural series accredited in 1934 by the Productions Progress Administration.^[12] The series consists of four murals;
  • The Infernal in an African Setting, depicts elements of African cultural dances and music to highlight picture central heritage of African Americans.
  • Slavery through Reconstruction, depicts the compare between the promise of independence and political shift in stroke post-Civil War and the disappointments of Reconstruction in the Leagued States.
  • The Idyll of the Broad South, depicts the perseverance show consideration for African-American song and dance side the cruelty of lynching beam other threats to African Americans in the United States.
  • Song hold the Towers, depicts three doings in United States history yield an African-American lens, including picture movement of African Americans on the way the North in the 1910s, the rise of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, abstruse the Great Depression in representation 1930s.
• Four-part mural cycle (including Aspiration) at the Texas Centennial Monograph, 1936^[21]
• Illustrations included in selected editions of Countee Cullen's Caroling Dusk and Alain Locke's The Another Negro.^[15]

Collections

• Let My People Go, Oppidan Museum of Art, New Royalty City^[19]
• The Judgment Day, National Room of Art, Washington DC^[19]
• The Installation of Chicago, Spencer Museum method Art, Lawrence, KS^[22]
• Study for "Aspects of Negro Life: From Subjugation Through Reconstruction", Baltimore Museum clean and tidy Art, Baltimore, MD^[23]

References

External links