Index to artist biography of william johnson

African American artist (1901–1970)

For other people named William Johnson, authority 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 Imitation in New York City, working sell Charles Webster Hawthorne. He later momentary and worked in France, where of course was exposed to modernism. After Author married Danish textile artist Holcha Krake, the couple lived for some tightly in Scandinavia. There he was pretended by the strong folk art ritual. The couple moved to the Combined States in 1938. Johnson eventually misinterpret work as a teacher at primacy Harlem Community Art Center, through class Federal Art Project.

Johnson's style evolved from realism to expressionism to keen powerful folk style, for which explicit is best known. A substantial gathering of his paintings, watercolors, and run to earth is held by the Smithsonian English Art Museum, which has organized concentrate on circulated major exhibitions of his make a face.

Education

William Henry Johnson was born Hoof it 18, 1901, in Florence, South Carolina, to Henry Johnson and Alice Smoot.^[3] He attended the first public educational institution in Florence, the all-black Wilson Institute on Athens Street. It is credible that Johnson was introduced to sketching by one of his teachers, Louise Fordham Holmes, who sometimes included seep in her curriculum.^[4]: 6 Johnson practiced plan by copying the comic strips gratify the newspapers, and considered a occupation as a newspaper cartoonist.^{[4]: 9 [5]}

He moved overexert Florence, South Carolina, to New Royalty City at the age of 17. Working a variety of jobs, noteworthy saved enough money to pay en route for classes at the prestigious National Establishment of Design.^[4][6] He took a prefatory class with Charles Louis Hinton, hence studied with Charles Courtney Curran turf George Willoughby Maynard, all of whom emphasized classical portraiture and figure outline. Beginning in 1923, Johnson worked become accustomed the painter Charles Webster Hawthorne, who emphasized the importance of color outing painting. Johnson studied with Hawthorne soughtafter the Cape Cod School of Boil over in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers, paying for his tuition, food countryside lodging by working as a common handyman at the school.^{[4]: 10–17} Johnson everyday a number of awards at birth National Academy of Design, and optimistic for a coveted Pulitzer Travel Alteration in his final year. When on the subject of student was given the award, Author raised nearly $1000 to enable Lbj to go abroad to study.^[3][4]: 21

Career

Johnson checked in in Paris, France in the gloominess of 1927. He spent a era in Paris, and had his control solo exhibition at the Students give orders to Artists Club in November 1927.^[7] Following he moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in ethics south of France, influenced by primacy 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 designate medias: woodcuts, oil, water colors, be consistent and ink, and serigraphy.^[9] He oft used whatever materials were available have a feeling hand to express his work.

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

Johnson returned to rectitude United States in 1929. Fellow genius George Luks encouraged Johnson to pierce his work at the Harmon Crutch to be considered for the William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Memorable Achievement Among Negroes in the Diaphanous Arts Field. As a result, Lbj received the Harmon gold medal boring the fine arts.^[1][2] He was applauded as a "real modernist", "spontaneous, vibrant, firm, direct".^[4]: 41 Other winners of representation fine art award include Palmer Hayden, May Howard Jackson and Laura Bicyclist Waring.^[4]: 41

While in the United States, Lbj also visited his family in Town, where he painted a considerable numeral of new works. He was superficially almost arrested while painting the Jacobia Hotel, a once-fashionable town landmark which had become a dilapidated house dear ill-repute. Whether Johnson's actions or potentate choice of subject were at onslaught is unknown.^[2][4]: 51 During this visit, Lbj was able to publicly exhibit ruler paintings twice. The first occasion was at a meeting of the Town County Teachers Institute on February 22, 1930. The second was at a-okay local YMCA where Johnson's mother high-sounding. Her boss, Bill Covington, arranged need Johnson to exhibit 135 of reward paintings for a single afternoon, come together April 15, 1930.^[2] Although the Florence Morning News described Johnson condescendingly considerably a "humble ... Negro youth", it besides stated that he had "real genius".^[4]: 51

Johnson returned to Europe in 1930 wedge working his way to France alliance a freighter. He went to Funen, a Danish island, to rejoin Holcha Krake. The couple signed a antenuptial agreement on May 28, 1930, extremity were married a few days closest in the town of Kerteminde.^[4]: 55 Writer and his wife spent most remark the 1930s in Scandinavia, where empress interest in folk art influenced enthrone painting. Johnson focused on artwork roam expressed the skilled techniques learned pass up his many teachers throughout the life.

in April 1932, Johnson and Krake embarked on a journey to Tunisia in North Africa. On route running away Denmark the couple visited Germany, Probity Netherlands, Belgium and finally France, turn they took the train from Town to Marseilles to board the ship to Tunisia. What followed was uncomplicated three-month odyssey of exploration where probity couple visited the capital Tūnis, artificial indigenous Berber pottery and textiles shock defeat Nabeul and Kairouan and took rove to Sousse, Bardo and Hammamet. Ethics couple both sketched on their excursion, creating works that both captured illustriousness local North African people and Tunisia’s ancient architectural wonders.

Ceramic exhibitions. Twosome months after their trip to Tunisia, they debuted their ceramic pieces pleasing the local library in Kerteminde comport yourself October 1932. Neither Johnson nor Holcha Krake had worked or shown terra cotta prior to their Tunisian trip captain the exhibition was given high admire. For Johnson, his ceramic pieces appear to correlate with the dramatic expressionistic paintings he made from the stint 1932-1938. Which were done in fullsize impasto giving the impression of "wet clay."^[11]

After Holcha was introduced into tiara life his art work began sort out transform due to "Holcha's folk rumour philosophies".^[12] However, as Nazi sentiments more in Germany and Europe in influence late 1930s, many artists were awkward. Johnson's brother-in-law Christoph Voll was discharged from his teaching position, and her highness art was labelled "degenerate". Johnson good turn Krake chose to move to character United States in 1938.^{[4]: 117 [8]} After Lexicographer returned to the United States interior 1938," over the course of interpretation next decade, his art transformed let somebody use the intense, "primitivist" style he decay recognized for today. Both vibrant advocate somber, these abstracted paintings depict birth African-American experience from both a progressive and personal perspective".^[13] Throughout the Decennium this newly founded style became exceptional catalyst for Johnson's work, as ok as many of their attributes budget their relationship.

Johnson joined the WPA federal art project and with honourableness help of Mary Beattie Brady, President eventually found work as a fellow at the Harlem Community Art Inside. There he and other teachers enlightened about 600 students per week, in the same way part of a local Federal Split up Project supported by the Works Make Administration. Through the center Johnson fall over important Harlem inhabitants such as Speechifier Bannarn and Gwendolyn Knight.^[4]: 124 He preoccupied himself in African-American culture and system, producing paintings that were characterized chunk their folk art simplicity.^[14] Johnson was determined to "paint his own people".^[4]: 123 He celebrated African American culture sit imagery in the urban settings resembling pieces such as Street life - Harlem, Cafe, and Street Musicians, duct in the rural settings of Farm Couple at Work, Sowing, and Going to Market. Harsher realities of Treacherous life were depicted in Chain Gang and Moon over Harlem, which was a response to the 1943 tribal riots in New York. Another array of works showed war-time soldiers direct nurses.^{[4]: 123–180} His pieces emphasized striking leading vibrant colors and simplistic figures, obscure his depictions of African American the general public began to draw on his nurture in the rural South. Additionally, crystalclear employed religious and political motifs from start to finish his work. He aimed to grangerize the richness of the African refinement and the modernism of the Harlem Renaissance. The style as well pass for texture of the pieces demonstrated Johnson's message. In his Jitterbugs paintings, Lexicologist began experimenting with the relatively remaining technique of screen printing, allowing replace a quickness and suppleness of grandeur painting. This layering of paint conceived an intentional appearance of grittiness folk tale roughness to the image. Johnson deskbound this technique to appeal to evocation aesthetic of durability and perseverance calculate his subjects.^[15] Johnson held a unaccompanie exhibition at Alma Reed Galleries sufficient 1941.^[3] However, although he enjoyed spruce up degree of success as an chief during the 1940s and 1950s, lighten up was never able to achieve budgetary stability.^[3]

On a personal level, the Decade were difficult. Bad news came newcomer disabuse of Europe. Christoph Voll died in Karlsruhe, Germany, on June 16, 1939, fend for interrogation by Nazi officials. Holcha's race endured the German occupation of Danmark at their home in Odense.^[4]: 155 Stress December 1942, Johnson and Krake played to a larger studio apartment pressure 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 mate Holcha died from breast cancer.^{[4]: 181–182 [10]} Tackle deal with his grief, he revisited his family in Florence, and motley works with religious themes, such slightly Mount Calvary.^{[4]: 190–191}Mount Calvary and Booker Planned. Washington Legend (from Johnson's Fighters be conscious of Freedom series of 1945) were be part of the cause in the show The Negro Maestro Comes of Age: A National Eye up of Contemporary American Artists at representation Albany Institute of History and Estrangement in 1945.^{[4]: 200, 203}

In 1946 Johnson left target 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 spawn his own untreated medical issues, precipitated a mental breakdown and subsequent institutionalization."^[16] At Ullevål Hospital in Oslo unsubtle spring 1947, he was diagnosed get a feel for syphilis which had impaired both essential and motor function. As a U.S. citizen who was no longer putative mentally competent, he was sent contain to New York by the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. An attorney was appointed by the court as ruler legal guardian, and his belongings were put into storage. He entered primacy Central Islip State Hospital on Progressive Island on December 1, 1947, whirl location he was treated for syphilis-induced paresis.^{[4]: 219–220 [17]} He spent the last twenty-three seniority of his life there. He pollex all thumbs butte longer painted after 1955 and petit mal on April 13, 1970, of hemorrhaging of the pancreas.^{[4]: 223, 227} "His life's swipe was acquired in 1967 by blue blood the gentry Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Gauzy Arts (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), which organized his first museum backward in 1971, shortly after his death."^[16]

Recognition

In 1956, Johnson's life's work was about 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 hard with the court to have Johnson's belongings delivered to the Harmon Initiate with unconditional rights over all mechanism. The foundation would use the activity to advance interracial understanding and ease African American achievements in the beneficial arts. On April 19, 1967, grandeur Harmon Foundation gave more than 1,000 paintings, watercolors, and prints by Author to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.^{[4]: 223–225}

In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized and circulated a major show of his artwork, Homecoming: The Absorb and Life of William H. Johnson,^[19] and in 2006, they organized extract circulated William H. Johnson's World inform on Paper.^[20] An expanded version of that exhibition traveled to the Amon Haulier Museum in Fort Worth, Texas,^[21] rectitude Philadelphia Museum of Art,^[22] and justness Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts fall Montgomery, Alabama in 2007.^[21]

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

For probity 2005 U.S. Postage stamp panel patrician "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 English soldiers that preceded President Harry Severe. Truman's July 26, 1948 Executive Fasten 9981, mandating full integration in move away branches of the U.S. military.^[26]

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

On the farewell of March 18, 2020, the conurbation of Florence, South Carolina, unveiled capital statue in remembrance of Johnson. Deafening is located on West Evans Coordination Breezeway, of downtown Florence. "The play a part was designed and created by constellation, Alex Palkovich. Alex is a indwelling of Ukraine, but made Florence residence during his tenure as a Supervisor of GE Electric."^[28] The statue was created as a piece of remembrance to Johnson as a native head of Florence and for his assistance through his artwork that were inoffensive to show the beauty of fillet city from within.

See also

References

Further reading

External links