"Each body has its art, each body has its pose."
Gwendolyn Brooks
Aaron Douglas
1899-1979
Illustrator, Modernist Artist, Muralist.
"Aspiration"
1936 Oil on Canvas, 60x60 in.
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
"We can go to African life and get
a certain amount of form and color,
understanding and using this knowledge
in development of an expression that
interprets our life."
– Aaron Douglas
Archibald J. Motley
1891-1981, Artist
"Blues"
1929 Oil on canvas, 80 x 100.3 cm
Collection of Archie Motley and Valerie Gerrard Browne
© Archie Motley
"Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going."
Langston Hughes
Beauford Joseph Delaney
1901-1979, Modernist Painter
"Greene Street"
1940, Oil on Canvas. 39 x 27 inch.
Private Collection
"I would like you to know,
I am a doctor of music."
Nina Simone
Charles Alston
1907-1977
Artist, Sculptor, Muralist, Teacher
"Modern Medicine"
1936 oil on canvas.
Mural in Harlem Hospital.
Artist must be free to
choose what he does, certainly,
but he must also never be
afraid to do what he might choose."
Langston Hughes
Hale Woodruff
1900-1980
Artist, Muralist, Teacher
"Amistad Mutiny"
1938, three panel mural
can be found at Talladega College in Alabama.
"No matter how far a person can go
the horizon is still way beyond you."
Zora Neal Hurston
Jacob Lawrence
1917-2000
Artist, Dynamic Cubism
"The Migration of the Negro" Panel 1
1940-41, Casein tempera on cardboard 12 x 18 in.
The Whitney Museum
"I have discovered in life
that there are ways of getting
almost anywhere you want to go,
if you really want to go."
JAMES LESESNE WELLS
(1902-1992)
Graphic Artist, Teacher.
"The flight into Egypt"
1930, oil on canvas
Private Collection of James L. Wells
"What we play is life."
Louis Armstrong
1905-1998
Textile Designer, Painter
"Ascent To Ethiopia"
1932, oil on canvas
Lois M. James
"The Artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination."
PALMER HAYDEN
1890-1973 Painter
"Midsummer Night in Harlem"
oil on canvas, 1938
"I paint what us Negroes, colored people, us Americans know. We're a brand new race, raised
and manufactured in the United States.
I do like to paint what they did."
Palmer Hayden
Prentiss Taylor
1907-1991
Illustrator, Lithographer, Painter
"Eight Black Boys in a Southern Jail"
1932, Lithography on paper, 9 1/8 x 6"
The University of Arizona Museum Art
(based on the Scottsboro Trial).
“Practically all great artists
accept the influence of others. But . . .
the artist with vision
sees his material, chooses, changes,
and by integrating what he has
learned with his own experiences,
finally molds something distinctly Personnel."
Romare Bearden
1911-1988 Artist, Writer
"The Cotton Pickers"
1941 Gouache on board,
The Romare Bearden Foundation
If it is to be, It is up to me.
- William H. Johnson
WILLIAM H. JOHNSON
1901-1970 Artist
"Street Life, Harlem"
1939-40, oil on plywood 45 5/8 x 38 5/8 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
"There are some people that
if they don't know,
you can't tell them."
Louis Armstrong