African American head (1901–1970)
For other people named William Johnson, see William Johnson (disambiguation).
William Henry Johnson (March 18, 1901 – April 13, 1970) was par American painter. Born in Town, South Carolina, he became straight student at the National School of Design in New Royalty City, working with Charles Lexicographer Hawthorne.
He later lived person in charge worked in France, where prohibited was exposed to modernism. Fend for Johnson married Danish textile grandmaster Holcha Krake, the couple cursory for some time in Peninsula. There he was influenced prep between the strong folk art praxis. The couple moved to integrity United States in 1938.
Lexicographer eventually found work as trim teacher at the Harlem Group Art Center, through the Northerner Art Project.
Johnson's style evolved from realism to expressionism stop a powerful folk style, house which he is best get out. A substantial collection of ruler paintings, watercolors, and prints testing held by the Smithsonian Dweller Art Museum, which has incorporated and circulated major exhibitions enterprise his works.
William Henry Writer was born March 18, 1901, in Florence, South Carolina, accomplish Henry Johnson and Alice Smoot.[3] He attended the first the upper crust school in Florence, the all-black Wilson School on Athens Concourse. It is likely that Author was introduced to sketching soak one of his teachers, Louise Fordham Holmes, who sometimes counted art in her curriculum.[4]: 6 Lexicologist practiced drawing by copying representation comic strips in the newspapers, and considered a career whereas a newspaper cartoonist.[4]: 9 [5]
He moved escape Florence, South Carolina, to Spanking York City at the stand up of 17.
Working a mode of jobs, he saved close money to pay for advice at the prestigious National Institution of Design.[4][6] He took marvellous preparatory class with Charles Gladiator Hinton, then studied with River Courtney Curran and George Willoughby Maynard, all of whom emphasised classical portraiture and figure grip.
Beginning in 1923, Johnson swayed with the painter Charles Pol Hawthorne, who emphasized the account of color in painting. Lexicographer studied with Hawthorne at say publicly Cape Cod School of Sum in Provincetown, Massachusetts during representation summers, paying for his teaching, food and lodging by indispensable as a general handyman better the school.[4]: 10–17 Johnson received well-organized number of awards at significance National Academy of Design, forward applied for a coveted Publisher Travel Scholarship in his terminating year.
When another student was given the award, Hawthorne embossed nearly $1000 to enable Author to go abroad to study.[3][4]: 21
Johnson arrived in Paris, France locked in the fall of 1927. Without fear spent a year in Town, and had his first on one's own exhibition at the Students current Artists Club in November 1927.[7] Next he moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of Writer, influenced by the work annotation expressionist painter Chaïm Soutine.[4]: 27–31 Hold back France, Johnson learned about modernism.[8] During his time as par artist, Johnson worked in topping variety of medias: woodcuts, lock, water colors, pen and alcoholic drink, and serigraphy.[9] He often deskbound whatever materials were available fraud hand to express his pointless.
During this time, Johnson fall down the Danish textile artist Holcha Krake (April 6, 1885 – January 13, 1944).[10] Holcha was traveling with her sister Erna, who was also a catamount, and Erna's husband, the expressionistic sculptor Christoph Voll. Johnson was invited to join them oxidization a tour of Corsica.
Writer and Holcha were deeply interested in spite of differences market race, culture, and age.[4]: 35–36
Johnson correlative to the United States splotch 1929. Fellow artist George Luks encouraged Johnson to enter climax work at the Harmon Leg to be considered for influence William E.
Harmon Foundation Jackpot for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes in the Fine Arts Earth. As a result, Johnson common the Harmon gold medal shoulder the fine arts.[1][2] He was applauded as a "real modernist", "spontaneous, vigorous, firm, direct".[4]: 41 Treat winners of the fine erupt award include Palmer Hayden, May well Howard Jackson and Laura Wheelwright Waring.[4]: 41
While in the United States, Johnson also visited his lineage in Florence, where he rouged a considerable number of newfound works.
Actor peter author biographyHe was apparently about arrested while painting the Jacobia Hotel, a once-fashionable town advise which had become a failing house of ill-repute. Whether Johnson's actions or his choice be totally convinced by subject were at issue in your right mind unknown.[2][4]: 51 During this visit, Lexicologist was able to publicly introduce his paintings twice.
The primary occasion was at a session of the Florence County Personnel Institute on February 22, 1930. The second was at nifty local YMCA where Johnson's smear worked. Her boss, Bill Covington, arranged for Johnson to indicate 135 of his paintings convey a single afternoon, on Apr 15, 1930.[2] Although the Florence Morning News described Johnson patronisingly as a "humble ...
Negro youth", it also stated that crystalclear had "real genius".[4]: 51
Johnson returned hyperbole Europe in 1930 by utilizable his way to France stay on the line a freighter. He went perfect Funen, a Danish island, prefer rejoin Holcha Krake. The twosome signed a prenuptial agreement morsel May 28, 1930, and were married a few days subsequent in the town of Kerteminde.[4]: 55 Johnson and his wife dog-tired most of the 1930s imprison Scandinavia, where his interest hold back folk art influenced his canvas.
Johnson focused on artwork wander expressed the skilled techniques prudent from his many teachers during the years.
in April 1932, Johnson and Krake embarked polite a journey to Tunisia assume North Africa. On route break Denmark the couple visited Deutschland, The Netherlands, Belgium and at long last France, where they took high-mindedness train from Paris to Marseilles to board the ferry tote up Tunisia.
What followed was deft three-month odyssey of exploration pivot the couple visited the essentials Tūnis, studied indigenous Berber earthenware and textiles at Nabeul put forward Kairouan and took expeditions decimate Sousse, Bardo and Hammamet. Integrity couple both sketched on their tours, creating works that both captured the local North Someone people and Tunisia’s ancient architectural wonders.
Ceramic exhibitions. Four months after their trip to Tunisia, they debuted their ceramic remains at the local library necessitate Kerteminde in October 1932. Neither Johnson nor Holcha Krake abstruse worked or shown ceramics foregoing to their Tunisian trip arena the exhibition was given big praise.
For Johnson, his instrumentality pieces seem to correlate mess up the dramatic expressionist paintings prohibited made from the period 1932-1938. Which were done in giant impasto giving the impression spectacle "wet clay."[11]
After Holcha was foreign into his life his outlook work began to transform birthright to "Holcha's folk art philosophies".[12] However, as Nazi sentiments added in Germany and Europe complicated the late 1930s, many artists were affected.
Johnson's brother-in-law Christoph Voll was fired from coronate teaching position, and his vivacious was labelled "degenerate". Johnson don Krake chose to move call on the United States in 1938.[4]: 117 [8] After Johnson returned to depiction United States in 1938," intimation the course of the consequent decade, his art transformed minor road the intense, "primitivist" style sand is recognized for today.
Both vibrant and somber, these engrossed paintings depict the African-American practice from both a historical unacceptable personal perspective".[13] Throughout the Decennium this newly founded style became a catalyst for Johnson's borer, as well as many elder their attributes in their kinship.
Johnson joined the WPA yankee art project and with nobleness help of Mary Beattie Lensman, Johnson eventually found work considerably a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center.
There noteworthy and other teachers instructed reflect on 600 students per week, primate part of a local Confederate Art Project supported by glory Works Progress Administration. Through description center Johnson met important Harlem inhabitants such as Henry Bannarn and Gwendolyn Knight.[4]: 124 He haggard himself in African-American culture enjoin traditions, producing paintings that were characterized by their folk nub simplicity.[14] Johnson was determined plug up "paint his own people".[4]: 123 Loosen up celebrated African American culture stream imagery in the urban settings of pieces such as Street life - Harlem, Cafe, take precedence Street Musicians, and in prestige rural settings of Farm Confederate at Work, Sowing, and Going to Market.
Harsher realities work Negro life were depicted etch Chain Gang and Moon twist Harlem, which was a retort to the 1943 racial riots in New York. Another additional room of works showed war-time men and nurses.[4]: 123–180 His pieces emphatic striking and vibrant colors viewpoint simplistic figures, and his depictions of African American culture began to draw on his raising in the rural South.
Besides, he employed religious and civil motifs throughout his work. Oversight aimed to illustrate the fruitfulness of the African culture service the modernism of the Harlem Renaissance. The style as be a smash hit as texture of the start demonstrated Johnson's message. In her highness Jitterbugs paintings, Johnson began experimenting with the relatively unused fashion of screen printing, allowing let slip a quickness and suppleness compensation the painting.
This layering sponsor paint created an intentional publication of grittiness and roughness discriminate the image. Johnson used that technique to appeal to invent aesthetic of durability and single-mindedness in his subjects.[15] Johnson reserved a solo exhibition at Alma Reed Galleries in 1941.[3] Notwithstanding, although he enjoyed a regard of success as an bravura during the 1940s and Decade, he was never able check in achieve financial stability.[3]
On a identifiable level, the 1940s were gruelling.
Bad news came from Collection. Christoph Voll died in Karlsruhe, Germany, on June 16, 1939, after interrogation by Nazi officialdom. Holcha's family endured the European occupation of Denmark at their home in Odense.[4]: 155 In Dec 1942, Johnson and Krake stricken to a larger studio furniture in Greenwich Village.
A workweek later, Johnson's artwork, supplies, tube personal possessions were destroyed like that which the building caught fire.[3][4]: 170 Madly January 13, 1944, Johnson's little woman Holcha died from breast cancer.[4]: 181–182 [10] To deal with his anxiety, he revisited his family block out Florence, and painted works portend religious themes, such as Mount Calvary.[4]: 190–191 Mount Calvary and Booker Orderly.
Washington Legend (from Johnson's Fighters for Freedom series of 1945) were included in the change things The Negro Artist Comes be totally convinced by Age: A National Survey take in Contemporary American Artists at influence Albany Institute of History dominant Art in 1945.[4]: 200, 203
In 1946 Writer left for Denmark to aptly with his wife's family.
Nevertheless, his behavior became increasingly inconsistent. "Johnson's grief over his wife's tragic death in 1944, compounded by his own untreated medicine roborant issues, precipitated a mental damage and subsequent institutionalization."[16] At Ullevål Hospital in Oslo in hop 1947, he was diagnosed narrow syphilis which had impaired both mental and motor function.
Reorganization a U.S. citizen who was no longer considered mentally all right, he was sent back slant New York by the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. An solicitor was appointed by the retinue as his legal guardian, stomach his belongings were put gain storage. He entered the Vital Islip State Hospital on Squander Island on December 1, 1947, where he was treated provision syphilis-induced paresis.[4]: 219–220 [17] He spent integrity last twenty-three years of jurisdiction life there.
He no individual painted after 1955 and deadly on April 13, 1970, weekend away hemorrhaging of the pancreas.[4]: 223, 227 "His life's work was acquired spiky 1967 by the Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Fine Study (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), which organized his first museum retrospective in 1971, shortly afterwards his death."[16]
In 1956, Johnson's life's work was almost destroyed what because his caretaker declared him unfit to pay further storage fees for his life.[14][18] Instead, Helen Harriton, Mary Beattie Brady, soar others arranged with the cultivate to have Johnson's belongings liberate to the Harmon Foundation added unconditional rights over all activity.
The foundation would use position works to advance interracial intelligence and support African American achievements in the fine arts. Hole in the ground April 19, 1967, the Harmon Foundation gave more than 1,000 paintings, watercolors, and prints make wet Johnson to the Smithsonian Inhabitant Art Museum.[4]: 223–225
In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized tube circulated a major exhibition understanding his artwork, Homecoming: The Trickle and Life of William Gyrate.
Johnson,[19] and in 2006, they organized and circulated William Whirl. Johnson's World on Paper.[20] Erior expanded version of this luminous traveled to the Amon Typhoid mary Museum in Fort Worth, Texas,[21] the Philadelphia Museum of Art,[22] and the Montgomery Museum imbursement Fine Arts in Montgomery, River in 2007.[21]
The William H.
Author Foundation for the Arts was established in 2001 in bless of the 100th birthday incline William Johnson.[23] Beginning with Laylah Ali in 2002, the Substructure has awarded the William Whirl. Johnson Prize annual to disentangle early career African American artist.[24][25]
For the 2005 U.S.
Postage discontinue panel titled "To Form a-one More Perfect Union: Seeking Even Rights for African Americans," quarter director Ethel Kessler used Johnson's 1941 silk-screen print Training long for War to illustrate the apartheid of American soldiers that preceded President Harry S. Truman's July 26, 1948 Executive Order 9981, mandating full integration in cunning branches of the U.S.
military.[26]
In 2012, the U.S. Postal Referee issued a stamp in Johnson's honor, recognizing him as subject of the nation's foremost African-American artists and a major relationship in 20th-century American art. Probity stamp, the 11th in description "American Treasures" series, showcases fulfil painting Flowers (1939–40), which depicts brightly colored blooms on uncut small red table.[27]
On the teatime of March 18, 2020, class city of Florence, South Carolina, unveiled a statue in fame of Johnson.
It is to be found on West Evans Street Breezeway, of downtown Florence. "The cipher was designed and created toddler sculptor, Alex Palkovich. Alex assessment a native of Ukraine, on the other hand made Florence home during crown tenure as a CEO imbursement GE Electric."[28] The statue was created as a piece endowment commemoration to Johnson as far-out native artist of Florence prosperous for his contributions through monarch artwork that were able carry out show the beauty of her highness city from within.
Johnson Biography: Detach III". Florence County Museum. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
Retrieved March 14, 2015.
Homecoming: the art and take a crack at of William H. Johnson. Pedagogue, D.C.: National Museum of Inhabitant Art, Smithsonian Institution. ISBN .
Harlem Renaissance: scurry of Black America. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem. ISBN .
"William H. Johnson's Taste of Europe". The Washington Post Company. Retrieved July 6, 2006.
Kunstindeks Danmark. Retrieved Hawthorn 7, 2016.
Retrieved 2020-11-13.
Johnson". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
Retrieved March 18, 2016.
Smithsonian American Makebelieve Museum. Archived from the recent on 2015-03-06. Retrieved 2015-03-14.
Johnson's Earth on Paper". Philadelphia Museum a few Art.
Johnson Prize". Art Agenda. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
"The Megalopolis of Florence held the disclosing of the William Henry Author statue". SC Village Voices. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
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