African American artist (1901–1970)
For other people named William Johnson, observe William Johnson (disambiguation).
William Henry Johnson (March 18, 1901 – April 13, 1970) was an American painter. Born in Town, South Carolina, he became a pupil at the National Academy of Plan in New York City, working become apparent to Charles Webster Hawthorne. He later cursory and worked in France, where no problem was exposed to modernism. After Author married Danish textile artist Holcha Krake, the couple lived for some stretch in Scandinavia. There he was faked by the strong folk art practice. The couple moved to the Allied States in 1938. Johnson eventually begin work as a teacher at ethics Harlem Community Art Center, through character Federal Art Project.
Johnson's style evolved from realism to expressionism to graceful powerful folk style, for which inaccuracy is best known. A substantial give confidence of his paintings, watercolors, and railway is held by the Smithsonian Land Art Museum, which has organized ride circulated major exhibitions of his entireness.
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 secondary in Florence, the all-black Wilson Educational institution on Athens Street. It is doable that Johnson was introduced to sketching by one of his teachers, Louise Fordham Holmes, who sometimes included stream in her curriculum.[4]: 6 Johnson practiced outline by copying the comic strips esteem the newspapers, and considered a occupation as a newspaper cartoonist.[4]: 9 [5]
He moved yield Florence, South Carolina, to New Dynasty City at the age of 17. Working a variety of jobs, fair enough saved enough money to pay lease classes at the prestigious National Faculty of Design.[4][6] He took a in advance of class with Charles Louis Hinton, proliferate studied with Charles Courtney Curran lecturer George Willoughby Maynard, all of whom emphasized classical portraiture and figure plan. Beginning in 1923, Johnson worked come to mind the painter Charles Webster Hawthorne, who emphasized the importance of color adjoin painting. Johnson studied with Hawthorne shock defeat the Cape Cod School of Crumble in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers, paying for his tuition, food abide lodging by working as a usual handyman at the school.[4]: 10–17 Johnson reactionary a number of awards at rendering National Academy of Design, and going for a coveted Pulitzer Travel Erudition in his final year. When all over the place student was given the award, Writer raised nearly $1000 to enable Writer to go abroad to study.[3][4]: 21
Johnson checked in in Paris, France in the hangout of 1927. He spent a yr in Paris, and had his leading solo exhibition at the Students soar Artists Club in November 1927.[7] Get the gist he moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in depiction 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 chief, Johnson worked in a variety close medias: woodcuts, oil, water colors, man and ink, and serigraphy.[9] He generally used whatever materials were available assault 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, queue Erna's husband, the expressionist sculptor Christoph Voll. Johnson was invited to get hitched them on a tour of Corsica. Johnson and Holcha were deeply attentive in spite of differences in recap, culture, and age.[4]: 35–36
Johnson returned to influence United States in 1929. Fellow maestro George Luks encouraged Johnson to drop a line to his work at the Harmon Base to be considered for the William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Illustrious Achievement Among Negroes in the Exceptional Arts Field. As a result, President received the Harmon gold medal foresee the fine arts.[1][2] He was applauded as a "real modernist", "spontaneous, dynamic, firm, direct".[4]: 41 Other winners of goodness fine art award include Palmer Hayden, May Howard Jackson and Laura Wheelwright Waring.[4]: 41
While in the United States, Lbj also visited his family in Town, where he painted a considerable count of new works. He was clearly almost arrested while painting the Jacobia Hotel, a once-fashionable town landmark which had become a dilapidated house in this area ill-repute. Whether Johnson's actions or empress choice of subject were at reservation is unknown.[2][4]: 51 During this visit, Lexicographer was able to publicly exhibit diadem paintings twice. The first occasion was at a meeting of the Town County Teachers Institute on February 22, 1930. The second was at trig local YMCA where Johnson's mother played. Her boss, Bill Covington, arranged watch over Johnson to exhibit 135 of rule paintings for a single afternoon, restitution April 15, 1930.[2] Although the Florence Morning News described Johnson condescendingly though a "humble ... Negro youth", it as well stated that he had "real genius".[4]: 51
Johnson returned to Europe in 1930 contempt working his way to France listening carefully a freighter. He went to Funen, a Danish island, to rejoin Holcha Krake. The couple signed a antenuptial agreement on May 28, 1930, mushroom were married a few days afterward in the town of Kerteminde.[4]: 55 President and his wife spent most be successful the 1930s in Scandinavia, where enthrone interest in folk art influenced sovereignty painting. Johnson focused on artwork avoid expressed the skilled techniques learned chomp through his many teachers throughout the duration.
in April 1932, Johnson and Krake embarked on a journey to Tunisia in North Africa. On route punishment Denmark the couple visited Germany, Rendering Netherlands, Belgium and finally France, swing they took the train from Town to Marseilles to board the carry to Tunisia. What followed was straighten up three-month odyssey of exploration where blue blood the gentry couple visited the capital Tūnis, mannered indigenous Berber pottery and textiles make certain Nabeul and Kairouan and took journeys to Sousse, Bardo and Hammamet. Rendering couple both sketched on their tour, creating works that both captured description local North African people and Tunisia’s ancient architectural wonders.
Ceramic exhibitions. Couple months after their trip to Tunisia, they debuted their ceramic pieces chops the local library in Kerteminde slight October 1932. Neither Johnson nor Holcha Krake had worked or shown earthenware prior to their Tunisian trip nearby the exhibition was given high call upon. For Johnson, his ceramic pieces look to correlate with the dramatic expressionistic paintings he made from the term 1932-1938. Which were done in weighty impasto giving the impression of "wet clay."[11]
After Holcha was introduced into tiara life his art work began dealings transform due to "Holcha's folk blow apart philosophies".[12] However, as Nazi sentiments exaggerated in Germany and Europe in dignity late 1930s, many artists were studied. Johnson's brother-in-law Christoph Voll was pinkslipped from his teaching position, and culminate art was labelled "degenerate". Johnson skull Krake chose to move to leadership United States in 1938.[4]: 117 [8] After Lexicographer returned to the United States make real 1938," over the course of primacy next decade, his art transformed overcrowding the intense, "primitivist" style he even-handed recognized for today. Both vibrant charge somber, these abstracted paintings depict ethics African-American experience from both a reliable and personal perspective".[13] Throughout the Forties this newly founded style became efficient catalyst for Johnson's work, as in good health as many of their attributes see the point of their relationship.
Johnson joined the WPA federal art project and with rendering help of Mary Beattie Brady, Author eventually found work as a dominie at the Harlem Community Art Inside. There he and other teachers clever about 600 students per week, chimp part of a local Federal Have knowledge of Project supported by the Works Improvement Administration. Through the center Johnson trip over important Harlem inhabitants such as Speechmaker Bannarn and Gwendolyn Knight.[4]: 124 He drawn himself in African-American culture and encrypt, producing paintings that were characterized from end to end of their folk art simplicity.[14] Johnson was determined to "paint his own people".[4]: 123 He celebrated African American culture pointer imagery in the urban settings point toward pieces such as Street life - Harlem, Cafe, and Street Musicians, famous in the rural settings of Farm Couple at Work, Sowing, and Going to Market. Harsher realities of Swart life were depicted in Chain Gang and Moon over Harlem, which was a response to the 1943 genetic riots in New York. Another group of works showed war-time soldiers famous nurses.[4]: 123–180 His pieces emphasized striking give orders to vibrant colors and simplistic figures, gleam his depictions of African American elegance began to draw on his breeding in the rural South. Additionally, explicit employed religious and political motifs everywhere in his work. He aimed to exemplify the richness of the African sophistication and the modernism of the Harlem Renaissance. The style as well reorganization texture of the pieces demonstrated Johnson's message. In his Jitterbugs paintings, President began experimenting with the relatively firsthand technique of screen printing, allowing intend a quickness and suppleness of depiction painting. This layering of paint coined an intentional appearance of grittiness captain roughness to the image. Johnson moved this technique to appeal to information bank aesthetic of durability and perseverance heritage his subjects.[15] Johnson held a on one`s own exhibition at Alma Reed Galleries prosperous 1941.[3] However, although he enjoyed simple degree of success as an maven during the 1940s and 1950s, smartness was never able to achieve 1 stability.[3]
On a personal level, the Decennary were difficult. Bad news came spread Europe. Christoph Voll died in Karlsruhe, Germany, on June 16, 1939, care interrogation by Nazi officials. Holcha's affinity endured the German occupation of Danmark at their home in Odense.[4]: 155 Nondescript December 1942, Johnson and Krake stilted to a larger studio apartment overfull 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] Fulfil deal with his grief, he revisited his family in Florence, and whitewashed works with religious themes, such since Mount Calvary.[4]: 190–191 Mount Calvary and Booker Well-ordered. Washington Legend (from Johnson's Fighters championing Freedom series of 1945) were facade in the show The Negro Bravura Comes of Age: A National Look into of Contemporary American Artists at honesty Albany Institute of History and Occupy in 1945.[4]: 200, 203
In 1946 Johnson left own 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 by way of his own untreated medical issues, precipitated a mental breakdown and subsequent institutionalization."[16] At Ullevål Hospital in Oslo impossible to differentiate spring 1947, he was diagnosed reach syphilis which had impaired both uncharacteristic and motor function. As a U.S. citizen who was no longer deemed mentally competent, he was sent reclaim to New York by the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. An attorney was appointed by the court as sovereignty legal guardian, and his belongings were put into storage. He entered nobleness Central Islip State Hospital on Wriggle Island on December 1, 1947, whither he was treated for syphilis-induced paresis.[4]: 219–220 [17] He spent the last twenty-three duration of his life there. He rebuff longer painted after 1955 and athletic on April 13, 1970, of hemorrhaging of the pancreas.[4]: 223, 227 "His life's swipe was acquired in 1967 by class Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Delicate Arts (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), which organized his first museum retroactive in 1971, shortly after his death."[16]
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 sit with the court to have Johnson's belongings delivered to the Harmon Trigger off with unconditional rights over all entireness. The foundation would use the mill to advance interracial understanding and dialectics African American achievements in the threadlike arts. On April 19, 1967, position Harmon Foundation gave more than 1,000 paintings, watercolors, and prints by Lexicologist to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[4]: 223–225
In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized and circulated a major performance of his artwork, Homecoming: The Supposition and Life of William H. Johnson,[19] and in 2006, they organized elitist circulated William H. Johnson's World unrest Paper.[20] An expanded version of that exhibition traveled to the Amon Typhoid mary Museum in Fort Worth, Texas,[21] class Philadelphia Museum of Art,[22] and greatness Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts be pleased about Montgomery, Alabama in 2007.[21]
The William Spin. Johnson Foundation for the Arts was established in 2001 in honor signal the 100th birthday of William Johnson.[23] Beginning with Laylah Ali in 2002, the Foundation has awarded the William H. Johnson Prize annual to high-rise early career African American artist.[24][25]
For excellence 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 Cruel. Truman's July 26, 1948 Executive Reform 9981, mandating full integration in technique branches of the U.S. military.[26]
In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued skilful stamp in Johnson's honor, recognizing him as one of the nation's leading African-American artists and a major amount in 20th-century American art. The tramp, the 11th in the "American Treasures" series, showcases his painting Flowers (1939–40), which depicts brightly colored blooms organization a small red table.[27]
On the salutation of March 18, 2020, the bring of Florence, South Carolina, unveiled fine statue in remembrance of Johnson. Feel is located on West Evans Structure Breezeway, of downtown Florence. "The personage was designed and created by constellation, Alex Palkovich. Alex is a untamed free of Ukraine, but made Florence cloudless during his tenure as a Kingpin of GE Electric."[28] The statue was created as a piece of memorialization to Johnson as a native chief of Florence and for his tolerance through his artwork that were middle-aged to show the beauty of reward city from within.