Harlem Renaissance Visual Arts- Painters

                                                                                                                         

"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." 

Langston Hughes

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

Lois Mailou James

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."

Richard Wright

 

PALMER HAYDEN 

1890-1973 Painter

      

"Midsummer Night in Harlem"

oil on canvas, 1938  

Harmon Collection

                                                                                               

"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

                                                                                     

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