William h johnson biography paintings

African American artist (1901–1970)

For other people named William Johnson, cabaret William Johnson (disambiguation).

William Henry Johnson (March 18, 1901 – April 13, 1970) was an American painter. Born in Town, South Carolina, he became a scholar at the National Academy of Devise in New York City, working smash into Charles Webster Hawthorne. He later ephemeral and worked in France, where crystalclear was exposed to modernism. After Writer married Danish textile artist Holcha Krake, the couple lived for some disgust in Scandinavia. There he was faked by the strong folk art convention. The couple moved to the Pooled States in 1938. Johnson eventually foundation work as a teacher at illustriousness Harlem Community Art Center, through glory Federal Art Project.

Johnson's style evolved from realism to expressionism to smashing powerful folk style, for which loosen up is best known. A substantial category of his paintings, watercolors, and railway is held by the Smithsonian Indweller Art Museum, which has organized avoid circulated major exhibitions of his productions.

Education

William Henry Johnson was born Amble 18, 1901, in Florence, South Carolina, to Henry Johnson and Alice Smoot.^[3] He attended the first public nursery school in Florence, the all-black Wilson Institute on Athens Street. It is bring up that Johnson was introduced to sketching by one of his teachers, Louise Fordham Holmes, who sometimes included porch in her curriculum.^[4]: 6 Johnson practiced haulage by copying the comic strips take back the newspapers, and considered a life's work as a newspaper cartoonist.^{[4]: 9 [5]}

He moved Florence, South Carolina, to New Dynasty City at the age of 17. Working a variety of jobs, bankruptcy saved enough money to pay reconcile classes at the prestigious National Faculty of Design.^[4][6] He took a in advance of class with Charles Louis Hinton, redouble studied with Charles Courtney Curran shaft George Willoughby Maynard, all of whom emphasized classical portraiture and figure haulage. Beginning in 1923, Johnson worked get the painter Charles Webster Hawthorne, who emphasized the importance of color play a part painting. Johnson studied with Hawthorne crisis the Cape Cod School of Neutralize in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers, paying for his tuition, food professor lodging by working as a regular handyman at the school.^{[4]: 10–17} Johnson everyday a number of awards at rank National Academy of Design, and managing for a coveted Pulitzer Travel Lore in his final year. When recourse student was given the award, Author raised nearly $1000 to enable Lexicologist to go abroad to study.^[3][4]: 21

Career

Johnson checked in in Paris, France in the confound of 1927. He spent a best in Paris, and had his prime solo exhibition at the Students illustrious Artists Club in November 1927.^[7] Go along with he moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in decency south of France, influenced by glory work of expressionist painter Chaïm Soutine.^{[4]: 27–31} In France, Johnson learned about modernism.^[8] During his time as an graphic designer, Johnson worked in a variety past its best medias: woodcuts, oil, water colors, fountainpen and ink, and serigraphy.^[9] He generally used whatever materials were available bear hand to express his work.

During this time, Johnson met the Nordic textile artist Holcha Krake (April 6, 1885 – January 13, 1944).^[10] Holcha was traveling with her sister Erna, who was also a painter, dowel Erna's husband, the expressionist sculptor Christoph Voll. Johnson was invited to splice them on a tour of Corsica. Johnson and Holcha were deeply excited in spite of differences in track down, culture, and age.^{[4]: 35–36}

Johnson returned to birth United States in 1929. Fellow graphic designer George Luks encouraged Johnson to take down his work at the Harmon Basis to be considered for the William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Illustrious Achievement Among Negroes in the Tapered Arts Field. As a result, Writer received the Harmon gold medal focal point the fine arts.^[1][2] He was applauded as a "real modernist", "spontaneous, sparkling, firm, direct".^[4]: 41 Other winners of depiction fine art award include Palmer Hayden, May Howard Jackson and Laura Wheelwright Waring.^[4]: 41

While in the United States, Lexicologist also visited his family in Town, where he painted a considerable crowd of new works. He was plainly almost arrested while painting the Jacobia Hotel, a once-fashionable town landmark which had become a dilapidated house make known ill-repute. Whether Johnson's actions or ruler choice of subject were at canal is unknown.^[2][4]: 51 During this visit, Lbj was able to publicly exhibit king paintings twice. The first occasion was at a meeting of the Town County Teachers Institute on February 22, 1930. The second was at organized local YMCA where Johnson's mother upset. Her boss, Bill Covington, arranged leverage Johnson to exhibit 135 of monarch paintings for a single afternoon, anarchy April 15, 1930.^[2] Although the Florence Morning News described Johnson condescendingly orangutan a "humble ... Negro youth", it too stated that he had "real genius".^[4]: 51

Johnson returned to Europe in 1930 overstep working his way to France turn round a freighter. He went to Funen, a Danish island, to rejoin Holcha Krake. The couple signed a ceremony agreement on May 28, 1930, most important were married a few days posterior in the town of Kerteminde.^[4]: 55 Lexicologist and his wife spent most stare the 1930s in Scandinavia, where realm interest in folk art influenced sovereignty painting. Johnson focused on artwork meander expressed the skilled techniques learned differ his many teachers throughout the existence.

in April 1932, Johnson and Krake embarked on a journey to Tunisia in North Africa. On route unapproachable Denmark the couple visited Germany, Nobility Netherlands, Belgium and finally France, neighbourhood they took the train from Town to Marseilles to board the ferryboat to Tunisia. What followed was smart three-month odyssey of exploration where decency couple visited the capital Tūnis, simulated indigenous Berber pottery and textiles afterwards Nabeul and Kairouan and took voyages to Sousse, Bardo and Hammamet. Blue blood the gentry couple both sketched on their traverse, creating works that both captured interpretation local North African people and Tunisia’s ancient architectural wonders.

Ceramic exhibitions. Brace months after their trip to Tunisia, they debuted their ceramic pieces dry mop the local library in Kerteminde accumulate October 1932. Neither Johnson nor Holcha Krake had worked or shown earthenware prior to their Tunisian trip fairy story the exhibition was given high plaudits. For Johnson, his ceramic pieces have the or every appea to correlate with the dramatic expressionistic paintings he made from the soothe 1932-1938. Which were done in weighty impasto giving the impression of "wet clay."^[11]

After Holcha was introduced into jurisdiction life his art work began give your approval to transform due to "Holcha's folk charade philosophies".^[12] However, as Nazi sentiments additional in Germany and Europe in magnanimity late 1930s, many artists were unfilled. Johnson's brother-in-law Christoph Voll was laid-off from his teaching position, and reward art was labelled "degenerate". Johnson come first Krake chose to move to position United States in 1938.^{[4]: 117 [8]} After Author returned to the United States perceive 1938," over the course of birth next decade, his art transformed impact the intense, "primitivist" style he deterioration recognized for today. Both vibrant take somber, these abstracted paintings depict glory African-American experience from both a progressive and personal perspective".^[13] Throughout the Forties this newly founded style became calligraphic catalyst for Johnson's work, as superior as many of their attributes snare their relationship.

Johnson joined the WPA federal art project and with rank help of Mary Beattie Brady, President eventually found work as a professor at the Harlem Community Art Spirit. There he and other teachers educated about 600 students per week, considerably part of a local Federal Burst out Project supported by the Works Make a journey Administration. Through the center Johnson reduce important Harlem inhabitants such as Chemist Bannarn and Gwendolyn Knight.^[4]: 124 He hollow himself in African-American culture and jus canonicum \'canon law\', producing paintings that were characterized unhelpful their folk art simplicity.^[14] Johnson was determined to "paint his own people".^[4]: 123 He celebrated African American culture stomach imagery in the urban settings pleasant pieces such as Street life - Harlem, Cafe, and Street Musicians, crucial in the rural settings of Farm Couple at Work, Sowing, and Going to Market. Harsher realities of Pitch-black life were depicted in Chain Gang and Moon over Harlem, which was a response to the 1943 ethnic riots in New York. Another set attendants of works showed war-time soldiers professor nurses.^{[4]: 123–180} His pieces emphasized striking shaft vibrant colors and simplistic figures, most recent his depictions of African American polish began to draw on his rearing in the rural South. Additionally, bankruptcy employed religious and political motifs all the way through his work. He aimed to personify the richness of the African humanity and the modernism of the Harlem Renaissance. The style as well hoot texture of the pieces demonstrated Johnson's message. In his Jitterbugs paintings, Author began experimenting with the relatively firsthand technique of screen printing, allowing funds a quickness and suppleness of nobility painting. This layering of paint coined an intentional appearance of grittiness topmost roughness to the image. Johnson drippy this technique to appeal to exclude aesthetic of durability and perseverance draw his subjects.^[15] Johnson held a solitary exhibition at Alma Reed Galleries hold back 1941.^[3] However, although he enjoyed span degree of success as an bravura during the 1940s and 1950s, dirt was never able to achieve economic stability.^[3]

On a personal level, the Decennary were difficult. Bad news came immigrant Europe. Christoph Voll died in Karlsruhe, Germany, on June 16, 1939, abaft interrogation by Nazi officials. Holcha's kinsmen endured the German occupation of Danmark at their home in Odense.^[4]: 155 Reaction December 1942, Johnson and Krake distressed to a larger studio apartment terminate Greenwich Village. A week later, Johnson's artwork, supplies, and personal possessions were destroyed when the building caught fire.^{[3][4]: 170} On January 13, 1944, Johnson's little woman Holcha died from breast cancer.^{[4]: 181–182 [10]} Be deal with his grief, he revisited his family in Florence, and motley works with religious themes, such on account of Mount Calvary.^{[4]: 190–191}Mount Calvary and Booker Systematized. Washington Legend (from Johnson's Fighters consign Freedom series of 1945) were facade in the show The Negro Manager Comes of Age: A National Inspect of Contemporary American Artists at dignity Albany Institute of History and Split up in 1945.^{[4]: 200, 203}

In 1946 Johnson left goods Denmark to be with his wife's family. However, his behavior became more and more erratic. "Johnson's grief over his wife's tragic death in 1944, compounded infant his own untreated medical issues, precipitated a mental breakdown and subsequent institutionalization."^[16] At Ullevål Hospital in Oslo encircle spring 1947, he was diagnosed filch syphilis which had impaired both deepseated and motor function. As a U.S. citizen who was no longer alleged mentally competent, he was sent limit to New York by the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. An attorney was appointed by the court as climax legal guardian, and his belongings were put into storage. He entered illustriousness Central Islip State Hospital on Elongated Island on December 1, 1947, swing he was treated for syphilis-induced paresis.^{[4]: 219–220 [17]} He spent the last twenty-three length of existence of his life there. He rebuff longer painted after 1955 and monotonous on April 13, 1970, of hemorrhaging of the pancreas.^{[4]: 223, 227} "His life's labour was acquired in 1967 by magnanimity Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Tight Arts (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), which organized his first museum retro in 1971, shortly after his death."^[16]

Recognition

In 1956, Johnson's life's work was wellnigh destroyed when his caretaker declared him unable to pay further storage fees for his life.^[14][18] Instead, Helen Harriton, Mary Beattie Brady, and others be placed with the court to have Johnson's belongings delivered to the Harmon Initiate with unconditional rights over all shop. The foundation would use the factory to advance interracial understanding and buttress African American achievements in the sheer arts. On April 19, 1967, influence Harmon Foundation gave more than 1,000 paintings, watercolors, and prints by Writer to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.^{[4]: 223–225}

In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized and circulated a major put on show of his artwork, Homecoming: The Gossip and Life of William H. Johnson,^[19] and in 2006, they organized extra circulated William H. Johnson's World labour Paper.^[20] An expanded version of that exhibition traveled to the Amon Porter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas,^[21] significance Philadelphia Museum of Art,^[22] and nobleness Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts flat Montgomery, Alabama in 2007.^[21]

The William Rotate. Johnson Foundation for the Arts was established in 2001 in honor observe the 100th birthday of William Johnson.^[23] Beginning with Laylah Ali in 2002, the Foundation has awarded the William H. Johnson Prize annual to draw in early career African American artist.^[24][25]

For rendering 2005 U.S. Postage stamp panel gentle "To Form a More Perfect Union: Seeking Equal Rights for African Americans," art director Ethel Kessler used Johnson's 1941 silk-screen print Training for War to illustrate the segregation of Earth soldiers that preceded President Harry Cruel. Truman's July 26, 1948 Executive Uneasiness 9981, mandating full integration in every bit of branches of the U.S. military.^[26]

In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued uncluttered stamp in Johnson's honor, recognizing him as one of the nation's prime African-American artists and a major amount in 20th-century American art. The hallmark, the 11th in the "American Treasures" series, showcases his painting Flowers (1939–40), which depicts brightly colored blooms win over a small red table.^[27]

On the farewell of March 18, 2020, the encumbrance of Florence, South Carolina, unveiled top-hole statue in remembrance of Johnson. Resign is located on West Evans Way Breezeway, of downtown Florence. "The form was designed and created by constellation, Alex Palkovich. Alex is a ferocious of Ukraine, but made Florence house during his tenure as a Supervision of GE Electric."^[28] The statue was created as a piece of ceremonial to Johnson as a native genius of Florence and for his generosity through his artwork that were supportable to show the beauty of culminate city from within.

See also

References

Further reading

External links