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Article

Afewerq, Gebre Iyesus  

Baye Yimam

Ethiopian painter, diplomat, customs director, entrepreneur, linguist, university professor, and novelist, was born in Zage, Gojjam province of Ethiopia, on 10 July 1868. His father, Gebre Iyesus Denke, was a priest serving a local church, and his mother, Fenta Tehun Adego Ayechew, was presumably a housewife. In Zage, then a center of learning, Afewerq learned the painting, poetry, church music, and liturgical dancing of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian tradition.

Afewerq was related to Empress Taytu Betul, wife of Emperor Menilek (1844–1913 on account of which he was brought to the palace to continue what he had started in Zage He was later sent to Italy to further his studies at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin Upon his return from Italy he began to produce mural paintings by order of the palace and decorated the churches at Entotto then the capital city However he soon ...

Article

Ahmad, Zaki Abu Shadi  

Emad Abdul-Latif

Egyptian poet, critic, broadcaster, painter, and physician, was born in the al-Hanafy district in Cairo. His father, Muhammad Abu Shadi, was the head of the Egyptian Bar Association and his mother, Amina Naguib, was a poetess. He completed his primary and secondary education in Cairo and was involved in antioccupation activities during his adolescence. He joined the faculty of medicine (named Qasr al-Aini) and then traveled to London in 1912 to complete his studies in medicine at the University of London where he obtained a certificate of honor from Saint George Hospital in 1915. He married a British woman and lived with her in Egypt until her death in 1945. Following his return to Egypt in 1922, he served in many governmental posts in such places as the Ministry of Health and the Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University. In 1946 he immigrated to the United States ...

Article

Araújo, Emanoel  

Roberto Conduru

was born on 15 November 1940, the son of Guilhermina Alves and Vital Araújo. His full name is Emanoel Alves de Araújo; he was born into a traditional family of goldsmiths in Santo Amaro da Purificação, in Bahia, Brazil. There, he learned carpentry with master Eufrásio Vargas, worked with linotype and typesetting in the official press, and held his first exhibition in 1959.

In the 1960s, he moved to Salvador, where he majored in printmaking at the Federal University of Bahia, in 1965. Since then, he has held solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions held in Brazil and abroad.

His artistic work has explored the transformation of traditional artistic media from chromatic and three dimensional experiments with printmaking his work unfolded in sculptures some of them displayed in public spaces His work has also promoted the articulation of African descended cultures with constructivist principles and forms ...

Article

Azevedo, Aluísio  

Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey

was born on 14 April 1857 in São Luís, capital of the northern Brazilian province of Maranhão. Born to David Gonçalves de Azevedo, Portugal’s vice consul in Brazil, and Emília Amália Pinto de Magalhães (also Portuguese), Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves was the younger brother of the famous playwright Artur Azevedo (1855–1908). Azevedo’s parents were not legally married, as his mother had been married beforehand to a Portuguese businessman. It was an arranged marriage that ended when Magalhães left her violent husband, causing social scandal.

Growing up in São Luís, Azevedo developed an early interest in painting and drawing. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1876 to study at the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes National Academy of Fine Arts In the capital of the Brazilian Empire he began working as an illustrator and caricaturist for several newspapers As many critics have pointed out Azevedo s craft as ...

Article

Bahaʾ al-Din Zuhayr  

Robert D. Young

Arab-born Egyptian poet and calligrapher of the Ayyubid period, was born 27/28 February 1186 in Mecca. He is also known as al-Bahaʾ Zuhayr. He moved to Qus, in upper Egypt, at a young age. Zuhayr’s later diwans (a Persian term meaning “collection of poems”) indicate some recollection of his time in Mecca; he likely moved to Qus when he became old enough to attend school. Qus was then a center of Islamic learning and culture. Zuhayr studied the Qurʾan and Islamic literature but was most enthused by poetry. Zuhayr made friends with another poet and quoted substantially from the “ancient” poets such as Imru al-Qays (c. 501–544), some of whom were pre-Islamic.

Despite a fascination with poetry Zuhayr also cultivated his position among the political elite He dedicated his first praise poem to the governor of Qus Zuhayr did not stop with the locals traveling to places such as Damascus ...

Article

Barboza, Anthony  

crystal am nelson

photographer, writer, and historian, was born Anthony Barboza in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Lillian Barboza, a homemaker, and Anthony Barboza Sr., a Fuller Brush salesman. Anthony Jr. was one of eight sons, one of whom was also an award-winning photographer and two of whom were well-known journalists. Barboza began his career in 1964, when he studied under Roy DeCarava in New York City at the Kamoinge Workshop, cofounded in 1963 as a response to the negative and biased representation of African Americans in mainstream media, with DeCarava serving as Kamoinge's first director. The group, which continued into the twenty-first century as Kamoinge, Inc., used photography to document and celebrate African American experiences.

Between 1965 and 1968 Barboza served as a photojournalist in the United States Navy Upon opening his commercial photo studio in New York City a year after being discharged he began shooting ...

Article

Beer, June  

Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar

was born in Bluefields, Nicaragua, to a working-class family. The youngest of eleven children, she was a self-taught painter who began her career painting free portraits before becoming one of Nicaragua’s most renowned artists. Her paintings depicted the landscapes and people of that country’s Atlantic Coast, a historically marginalized region.

Beer is the only painter from Bluefields to have received national and international attention for her artwork. The city was a major port during the colonial period, when it was the capital of the British Protectorate of the Mosquito Coast. It was incorporated into Nicaragua in 1894, though it remained largely forgotten and ignored until the late twentieth century. Thus its primarily Afro-descendant and Afro-indigenous population remained economically and politically disenfranchised throughout its history. It was in this context that Beer raised four children as a single mother.

Beer began painting during a two year stay in the United ...

Article

Belgrave, Valerie  

Sherry Johnson

was born in San Juan, Trinidad, to parents who had the means to provide the artist with the tools necessary for her to explore a love of drawing. Little is known about her family background and early life. She developed her skills at high school at St. Joseph’s Convent, San Fernando, where, recognizing she could “do art,” her teachers encouraged her. In high school she often scored the highest grades in the visual arts—a fact that embarrassed her because, even then, her art did not follow conventional replications of the landscape like the British models she and her fellow students sought to emulate. These were the beginnings of what appeared to be her innate sensibility for abstract modern art.

In the late 1960s Belgrave attended Sir George Williams University now Concordia in Montreal Canada where she earned a B A in the fine arts and literature concurrently obtaining her degree ...

Article

Belgrave, Valerie  

Valerie Belgrave's best-known work is Ti Marie (1989). Belgrave is also a visual artist whose has exhibited her dyed works in Trinidad and Canada.

See also Literature, English-Language, in the Caribbean.

Article

Bennett, Gwendolyn  

Sandra Y. Govan

Although she never collected her published poetry into a volume nor produced a collection of short stories, Gwendolyn Bennett was recognized as a versatile artist and significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Torn between her ambition to work as a graphic artist and her desire to become a proficient writer using the medium of either poetry or prose, Bennett maintained the profile of an arts activist in New York City's African American arts community for over twenty years. However, the five-year period spanning 1923 to 1928 proved to be the most productive for her as a creative writer. It was within this brief span that James Weldon Johnson recognized Bennett as a lyric poet of some power.

Born in Giddings, Texas, Bennett led a nomadic childhood before her father, Joshua Robbin Bennett finally settled his family into comfortable surroundings in Brooklyn New York Bennett completed her secondary education at ...

Article

Bennett, Gwendolyn  

Theresa Leininger-Miller

writer and artist, was born in Giddings, Texas, the daughter of Joshua Robin Bennett and Mayme F. Abernathy, teachers on an Indian reservation. In 1906 the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Gwendolyn's father studied law and her mother worked as a manicurist and hairdresser. When her parents divorced, her mother won custody, but her father kidnapped the seven-year-old Gwendolyn. The two, with Gwendolyn's stepmother, lived in hiding in various towns along the East Coast and in Pennsylvania before finally settling in New York.

At Brooklyn's Girls' High (1918–1921) Bennett participated in the drama and literary societies—the first African American to do so—and won first place in an art contest. She attended fine arts classes at Columbia University (1921) and the Pratt Institute, from which she graduated in 1924 While she was still an undergraduate her poems Nocturne and Heritage were published in ...

Article

Bennett, Gwendolyn  

Maud C. Mundava

poet, artist, illustrator, teacher, and journalist. (Some of her works appear under Gwendolyn Bennett Jackson and Gwendolyn Bennett Crosscup.) Bennett was the daughter of Joshua R. Bennett and Mayme F. Abernathy, teachers on a Nevada Native American reservation. She was born in Giddings, Texas, and later lived in Pennsylvania, Florida, and New York. When Bennett's parents divorced, she moved to New York with her stepmother and father. She was married to Alfred Jackson, a physician (1928) and then to Richard Crosscup, a teacher (1941). She had no children.

As an African American poet, artist, illustrator, teacher, and journalist, Bennett contributed significantly to the Harlem Renaissance (an African American artistic movement) and to U.S. history and culture. She attended fine arts classes at Columbia University (1921), at Pratt Institute (1924 and in France ...

Article

Bennett, Gwendolyn  

Theresa Leininger-Miller

Bennett, Gwendolyn (08 July 1902–30 May 1981), writer and artist, was born in Giddings, Texas, the daughter of Joshua Robin Bennett and Mayme F. Abernathy, teachers on a Native American reservation. In 1906 the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Bennett’s father studied law and her mother worked as a manicurist and hairdresser. Her parents divorced and her mother won custody, but her father kidnapped the seven-year-old Gwendolyn. The two, with her stepmother, lived in hiding in various towns along the East Coast and in Pennsylvania before finally settling in New York.

At Brooklyn s Girls High 1918 1921 Bennett participated in the drama and literary societies the first African American to do so and won first place in an art contest She next attended fine arts classes at Columbia University 1921 and the Pratt Institute from which she graduated in 1924 While she was still an ...

Article

Beyene, Haile  

Ghirmai Negash

avant-garde Eritrean novelist, playwright, and painter-cum-sculptor, was educated in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, from which he graduated in 1963 with a degree in public administration and political science. Beyene Haile lived in Addis Ababa until Eritrean independence. In 1992, he moved to Asmara, where he worked as a management consultant and trainer while still pursuing his artistic career.

Beyene Haile is the author of three Tigrinya-language novels and a play. His 1965 debut novel, Abiduʾdo Teblewo? Madness differs from conventional Tigrinya writing in at least three fundamental ways First it takes an intellectual and artist as its main character and tells his story with compelling force and narrative skill Wounded by life the central character of the novel a bohemian artist called Mezgebe uses his art to heal his wounds and those of others in a manner that borders on insanity Another ...

Article

Blake, William  

Christopher Campbell

London‐born poet, printer, visionary, and ‘prophet against empire’. Over the course of his lifetime Blake confronted the horrors of slavery through his literary and pictorial art. He was able both to counter pro‐slavery propaganda and to complicate typical abolitionist verse and sentiment with a profound and unique exploration of the effects of enslavement and the varied processes of empire.

Blake's poem ‘The Little Black Boy’ from Songs of Innocence (1789 examines the mind forg d manacles of racial constructions in the minds of individuals both in the poem itself in the form of the black child and his white counterpart and also in the minds of those involved in the political dispute over abolition Seeming to explain a desire for racial acceptance and spiritual purity through assimilation into white British society and seeming also to be endorsing conventional assumptions of white racial superiority the poem ...

Article

Breytenbach, Breyten  

Kennedy A. Walibora Waliaula

South African painter, writer, poet, and antiapartheid activist, was born in Bonnievale in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The third-born child in a family of five (four sons, and one daughter), Breytenbach was a twin, although his twin died at infancy. The Breytenbachs descended from the lineage of one Coenrad Breytenbach, a military officer of lower rank who arrived in South Africa from Europe in 1656 It is unclear whether Coenrad Breytenbach was Dutch or whether he had other European origins On the maternal side Breyten Breytenbach descended from the Cloetes of France However he would often downplay his European origins stressing instead his ties to Africa Two of his brothers were prominent figures in South Africa and had strong associations with the apartheid system Jan was a senior military officer while Cloete was a famous photojournalist Breytenbach s opposition to apartheid and Afrikanerdom made him something of a ...

Article

Burroughs, Margaret Taylor Goss  

LaNesha NeGale DeBardelaben

artist, educator, and museum founder, was born Margaret Victoria Taylor in St. Rose, Louisiana, the youngest of three daughters of Christopher Alexander Taylor, a farmer, and Octavia Pierre Taylor, a domestic worker and schoolteacher. As a small child Margaret Taylor learned that her great-grandmother had been enslaved. Taylor and her two sisters were enamored by the stories told to them about their Creole, white, and African heritage by their French-speaking Creole grandmother. When the five-year-old Taylor moved to Chicago with her family and many other North-migrating African Americans, she took with her an appreciation for the enriched oral tradition common to her beloved St. Rose community.

In Chicago the young Taylor adjusted to life in a northern city While in the South Taylor s mother had taught in a one room schoolhouse with little or no classroom supplies in Chicago Taylor attended a school that had many classrooms ...

Article

Burroughs, Margaret Taylor Goss  

Richard A. Long

Margaret Burroughs was born in St. Rose, Louisiana, near New Orleans, but was brought at the age of five by her parents, Alexander and Octavia Pierre Taylor, to Chicago where she grew up, was educated, and where her distinctive career has unfolded. She attended the public schools of Chicago, including the Chicago Teacher's College. In 1946, she received a BA in education and in 1948, an MA in education from the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1940 to 1968 she was a teacher in the Chicago public schools and subsequently a professor of humanities at Kennedy-King College in Chicago (1969–1979).

Burroughs has a national reputation as a visual artist and as an arts organizer. Her long exhibition record as a painter and printmaker began in 1949 and included exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad A retrospective of her work was held in Chicago ...

Article

Carew, Jan  

Michael Niblett

was born on 24 September 1920 in the village of Agricola in British Guiana (now Guyana). The only son of Ethel Robertson and Alan Carew, he had a middle-class upbringing. Between 1926 and 1938, he attended Agricola Wesleyan School, then Catholic elementary school, followed by Berbice High School in New Amsterdam, Guyana. In 1939 he was called up to serve in the British army, and four years later he became a customs officer in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital. He published his first written work in the Guyanese magazine Christmas Annual in 1944, while also experimenting with painting and drawing in his leisure time. From 1945 to 1949, he studied in the United States, first at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and then at Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1948 Carew exhibited his paintings at the Cleveland Public Library Returning to Guyana a year later he ...

Article

Carter, Vincent O.  

Steve Paul

expatriate writer and artist, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Joseph and Eola Carter. His mother worked in a laundry; his father was a hotel porter. For most of his boyhood, the Carters lived in a second-floor apartment at 618 Cottage Lane in Kansas City's ethnically diverse north end. Their street was an alley of bungalows and small houses that ran behind the dwellings of mostly Italian immigrants. Carter was shy, bookish, and smart, and developed a fine singing voice. As a schoolboy he liked to take Sunday outings on his own to the stately art museum, where he stared at Flemish paintings. Carter graduated from Lincoln High School in 1941 and entered the U S Army He served three years with the 509th Port Battalion mostly in France On his return he worked as a railroad cook went to college Lincoln University in ...