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was a prominent Haitian painter associated with the first generation of “naïve” or modern artists who came to prominence with the founding of the Centre d’art in Port-au-Prince. Born in Jacmel around 1923, little is recorded about the life of Castera prior to his becoming the houseboy of DeWitt Peters—founder and director of the Centre d’Art—in the mid-1940s. His association with Peters and his passion for painting gave Bazile access to the Centre d’art, of which he would become a member in November 1945. Despite a short career, Castera became a prolific painter and is particularly known for religious paintings and portraiture.

The religious paintings of Bazile often broached Christian and Vodou-based topics. In his 1950 painting Petro Ceremony, the artist depicts a popular Vodou ceremony associated with Haiti’s revolutionary roots. Placed indoors in a contemporary setting—a houmfor the painting depicts a female practitioner standing above ...

Romare Bearden was inspired by the work of early-twentieth- century European artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Joan Miró, who championed a collage aesthetic. These artists painted or pasted onto the artwork's surface elements from various sources, creating images with stylistic and spatial distortions. The Civil Rights Movement also inspired Bearden, and he assembled a group of African American artists in the early 1960s to create artwork in celebration of the movement. When they rejected his suggestion that collage be the official medium of the group, Bearden began to create collages on his own.

Bearden became famous for his collages of the 1960s. In the works from this period, Bearden combined acrylic and/or oil paints with sources drawn from magazines, newspapers, and photographs to construct images of African American people and their surroundings.

Childhood memories of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Charlotte North Carolina where he was ...

artist, was born Romare Howard Bearden in Charlotte, North Carolina, the son of R. Howard Bearden, a grocer, and Bessye Johnson. When Bearden was about four years old, the family moved to New York, settling in Harlem, where he went to public school and his parents developed a wide network of acquaintances among the Harlem jazz musicians and intellectuals of the day. His father later became an inspector for the New York Board of Health; his mother, a civic leader. Bearden finished high school in Pittsburgh, however, having lived there for a time with his grandmother. In 1932, after two years at Boston University, he transferred to New York University, where he created illustrations for the undergraduate humor magazine and earned a BS degree in Education in 1935. For the next two years he contributed political cartoons to the Baltimore Afro-American Unable to find ...

painter, printmaker, and collage artist. Romare Howard Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 12 September 1911, to Richard Howard and Bessye Bearden. Although he only spent two years in North Carolina, his grandparents conveyed a sense of history and connection to the South, a connection that was reflected in his work throughout his career. Most of his childhood and adult life were spent in New York. He moved to New York in 1914, and then to Harlem in 1920. His mother, Bessye, was elected to the New York City school board in 1922 education was of paramount importance in his family Bearden had an expansive diverse career and is considered one of the finest American artists of the twentieth century He had an interest in political social and cultural issues including the visual arts music and literature He was particularly ...

whose rich and surreal compositions have marked him as among the most prolific of his generation, was born in 1911. Little is known of the artist’s childhood and background, but many accounts note that Benoît worked as a cab driver and chauffeur, a shoemaker, and a decorator of pottery before becoming a full-time painter. Working as the chauffeur of Dewitt Peters—director of Haiti’s Centre d’Art—in 1944, Benoît became a painter associated with the Centre early in its founding. He would marry Hermithe, the daughter of artist Hector Hyppolite, establishing himself in Port-au-Prince as a prolific painter of everyday Haitian life as well as Haitian religion.

His early 1946 painting Landscape displays the means by which Benoît created dynamic landscapes that incorporate figures throughout the composition. In 1951 Benoît was commissioned to paint the nativity scene opening the apse mural of the Cathedral Ste Trinité in Port au ...

whose diverse body of work made him among the most prominent of his generation, was born on 29 January 1929 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Lexile Bigot, a peasant from Anse-à-Veau, and Talide Evrard of Pétionville. The artist was raised in the Portail Léogane suburb, which included the capital city’s red light district. Bigaud excelled in public school as an expert drawer and artist. He was discovered by famed Haitian painter Hector Hyppolite and became his apprentice at the tender age of 15. At 17, Bigaud was admitted as a member of the Centre d’Art, Haiti’s premier art institution. He became one of its youngest and most prolific artists by exploring themes regarding the construction of Haitian identity with painterly expertise.

By the age of 20 Bigaud had received a commission to complete a mural for one of the side interior walls of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of Ste Trinité in ...

prima ballerina, modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, and painter, was born Janet Fay Collins in New Orleans, the daughter of Ernest Lee Collins, a tailor, and Alma de Lavallade (the noted dancer Carmen de Lavallade was a first cousin on this side of the family), a seamstress. At the age of four Collins moved to Los Angeles with her family, which included three sisters and one brother. In Los Angeles, Collins had trouble being accepted into “whites-only” dance studios, so she worked with private tutors. Her first formal ballet lessons were at a Catholic community center at the age of ten.

When she was fifteen Collins auditioned for the prestigious Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo led by the legendary Leonide Massine Collins was accepted but only on the condition that she stay in the corps de ballet and that she paint her face white to blend in with the other ...

Beauford Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. According to his younger brother, painter Joseph Delaney, Delaney was preoccupied with art even as a young child. He received his first formal art training from Lloyd Branson, a white artist living in Knoxville. Branson encouraged him to move to Boston, Massachusetts in 1924. There he studied painting at the Massachusetts Normal School, the South Boston School of Art, and the Copley Society.

In 1929 Delaney moved to New York, where he held a variety of jobs while he established himself as a painter. Twelve of his portraits were displayed in a 1930 group show at the Whitney Studio Galleries later the Whitney Museum of American Art In exchange for working at the Whitney as a guard telephone operator and gallery attendant Delaney received studio space and a place to live He had his first one man ...

Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas. After graduating from the University of Nebraska, he taught art at Lincoln High School in Topeka from 1923 to 1925. He moved to Harlem, New York in 1925, the year cultural critic and philosopher Alain Leroy Locke launched the New Negro movement. This movement expressed African Americans' new pride in their African heritage, which manifested itself in literature, song, dance, and most significantly for Douglas, art.

Douglas soon made the acquaintance of German American portrait artist Winold Reiss, who illustrated the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic an issue devoted to the New Negro movement and edited by Locke Both Reiss and Locke encouraged Douglas to develop his own aesthetic from design motifs in African art Douglas followed their suggestions and sought examples of African art which in the 1920s were beginning to be purchased by American museums ...

artist and educator, was born in Topeka, Kansas, the son of Aaron Douglas Sr., a baker from Tennessee, and Elizabeth (maiden name unknown), an amateur artist from Alabama. Aaron had several brothers and sisters, but he was unique in his family in his singular drive to pursue higher education. He attended segregated elementary schools and then an integrated high school. Topeka had a strong and progressive black community, and Aaron was fortunate to grow up in a city where education and social uplift were stressed through organizations such as the Black Topeka Foundation. He was an avid reader and immersed himself in the great writers, including Dumas, Shakespeare, and Emerson His parents were able to feed and clothe him but could offer him no other help with higher education When he needed money to pursue a college degree he traveled via rail to Detroit where ...

Ghanaian painter and sculptor, was born in Anyako in the Volta region of what was then the Gold Coast and is now Ghana. He was the son of a weaver, and is a member of the Ewe ethnic group.

Anatsui began professional art training at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana (1965–1969). During this four-year training period, which emphasized Western art techniques, Anatsui specialized in sculpture with particular focus on life and figure studies. During the early years of his career and training, however, Anatsui was influenced by the work of Oku Ampofo, Vincent Akwete Kofi, and Kofi Antubam, who began to reject the foreign influences in their artistic training and pay increasing attention to indigenous art forms. This artistic movement was encapsulated in the Ghanaian concept of sankofa. Responding to colonial efforts to denigrate African culture, sankofa encouraged the careful selection and inclusion of ...

artist and activist, was born in Detroit, Michigan, the third of ten children of Betty Solomon Guyton and George Guyton, a construction worker. His mother reared the children on her own after George Guyton left the-family, when Tyree Guyton was nine years old. Guyton grew up on the east side of Detroit in an area called “Black Bottom,” one of the oldest African American communities in the city. He attended Northern High School, but he did not graduate and earned his GED at a later date.

Guyton began painting at the age of eight when his grandfather, Sam Mackey a housepainter at the time who later became a painter of fine art gave him the tool to create a paintbrush Because of his family s poverty Guyton felt all he had was his art He felt like he had no freedom and he realized early on that ...

musician, activist, author, painter, and sculptor, was born Richard Pierce Havens in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest of nine children. He grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. His father, Richard Havens, worked as a metal plater and dreamed of becoming a professional pianist, eventually learning to play a number of instruments. Richie's mother Mildred a bookbinder and casual singer at home encouraged her young son when he started singing background vocals at the age of twelve for local groups All kinds of music were played in the Havens home Richie s grandmother listened to Yiddish gospel and big band music his mother enjoyed country music and his father loved jazz He joined the doo wop singing group the Five Chances at age fifteen and performed the next year with the Brooklyn McCrea Gospel Singers a group that sang hymns for neighborhood churches Havens ...

Born in Florence, South Carolina, William Johnson began drawing when he was a child, encouraged by sympathetic art teachers. Determined to go to New York City to become an artist, he accompanied his uncle there in 1918 when they both took jobs as stevedores. He was able to send money home as well as save for his education. In 1921 he began five years of rigorous classical training at the National Academy of Design.

Winning numerous prizes at the academy, Johnson came to the attention of Charles W. Hawthorne, an influential instructor, who invited him to his Cape Cod School of Art on work-study programs during the summers of 1924–1926. Hawthorne also raised $1000 so that Johnson could spend a year studying in Paris. Hawthorne introduced his protégé to George Luks a member of The Eight a group of realist painters who were later known ...

Lois Mailou Jones was born in Boston, Massachusetts. At the age of four, she began to copy paintings in the homes of wealthy white people for whom her mother, a beautician and hat maker, worked. Her formal education began in her high school years, when she attended vocational drawing classes in the evenings and on weekends at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She then studied textile design at the Boston Designers Art School before beginning a four-year program in School of the Museum of Fine Arts, from which she was graduated in 1927 with honors in design.

Because she was black, Jones was denied a graduate assistantship and explored what appeared to be her only other option, teaching art at a black school. In 1928 she established an art department at Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia North Carolina At that time art departments at southern black schools ...

artist and teacher, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the second of two children of Carolyn Dorinda Adams, a beautician, and Thomas Vreeland Jones, a building superintendent. Jones's father became a lawyer at age forty, and she credited him with inspiring her by example: “Much of my drive surely comes from my father—wanting to be someone, to have an ambition” (Benjamin, 4). While majoring in art at the High School of Practical Arts, Jones spent afternoons in a drawing program at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. On weekends she apprenticed with Grace Ripley, a prominent designer of theatrical masks and costumes. From 1923 to 1927 she studied design at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and became one of the school s first African American graduates Upon graduation Jones who had earned a teaching certificate from the Boston Normal Art School received a one ...

An active and acclaimed painter for more than six decades, Lois Mailou Jones enjoyed two impressive careers, one as a professor of art and the other as an artist. Her teaching gave her financial security and served as an inspiration and a challenge.

Lois Jones was born in Boston to Caroline Dorinda Adams and Thomas Vreeland Jones. Her father was superintendent of a large office building and attended night classes at Suffolk Law School, where he received his law degree in 1915 at the age of forty. “I think that much of my drive surely comes from my father,” Jones once said, “wanting to be someone, having an ambition.” Her mother was a beautician and Jones’s first mentor. She filled the Jones home with color and freshly cut flowers, instilling in her daughter a love of beauty.

With the assistance of four annual tuition scholarships Jones earned a diploma ...

Throughout his career, Wilfredo Lam was active in major art movements, including surrealism and modernism, and was associated with many of the best-known figures in the art world of his day, including Pablo Picasso and André Breton. Lam's surrealist compositions make use of his Afro-Chinese and Cuban ancestry, and his most famous paintings, including The Eternal Presence (1945) and The Jungle (1943), present his mythic, erotic, and syncretic inheritances in a supernatural and symbolic way. Lam's style is easily recognizable for its mysterious, spiritual dimension, which proceeds from his debt to African religious traditions in the Caribbean, as exemplified by Altar for Eleggua (1944 His style is also known for the abstract eroticized and fetishistic representations of body parts and African masks that melt into and surge out of jungle like landscapes of camouflage in the tropics He was a distinguished talent of ...

one of the great modern painters of the twentieth century. Jacob Lawrence experienced early success as an artist, and for more than sixty years he sustained an aesthetic vision of the past, providing a visual commentary on the social position of African Americans and the power of the community in mobilizing political change. Lawrence blended the figurative with a unique element of the abstract to create images that are familiar, yet also distinctly modern.

The first son of Jacob Lawrence, a railroad cook from South Carolina, and Rosa Lee Armstead Lawrence, a domestic servant, Jacob Armstead Lawrence was born on 7 September 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1919 the Lawrence family moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, where Lawrence senior looked for work as a coal miner. When Lawrence was seven, his father left the family and settled in Harlem; his mother moved with her three children—Jacob ...

Jacob Armstead Lawrence painted figurative and narrative pictures of the black community and black history for more than sixty years in a consistent modernist style, using expressive, strong design and flat areas of color. His parents, Jacob Armstead Lawrence of South Carolina and Rose Lee of Virginia, were part of the Great Migration, the movement of African Americans from the South to the promise of jobs in Northern industry during the two decades following the onset of World War I.

Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he was two years old, his family moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, and, a few years later, to Philadelphia, where his father became a part-time dining-car cook on the railroads. After his parents separated in 1924, Lawrence, his mother, and his younger brother and sister moved to Harlem where they joined relatives who had also relocated in ...