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Article

Afewerk, Tekle  

Rebecca Martin Nagy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Ethiopian artist, was born in Ankober in Shewa Province, Ethiopia. As a young student Afewerk excelled in mathematics and draftsmanship. Recognizing these talents, the government of Emperor Haile Selassie provided a scholarship in 1947 for Afewerk to study mining engineering in England. Showing great promise as a visual artist, Afewerk soon received the emperor’s permission to transfer to London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts. Subsequently, he attended the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. While studying there, he made several trips to the European continent to see and experience works of art firsthand.

Afewerk’s first solo exhibition of paintings in Addis Ababa, held at Municipality Hall in 1954 was not universally well received In particular an abstract interpretation of the Crucifixion inspired by European modernism now in the National Museum of Ethiopia was the subject of debate and controversy in a city with a centuries old ...

Article

Agegnehu, Engida  

Rebecca Martin Nagy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Ethiopian artist, was born in the Gondar Administrative Region of Ethiopia in 1905. Another form of his name is Agegnehu Engeda. Although relatively little is known about his life and work, Agegnehu’s role as a pioneer among twentieth-century Ethiopian painters is noteworthy. At a time when the only opportunity for higher learning in Ethiopia was in church schools and the only training available to aspiring painters was through apprenticeship to church artists, the young Agegnehu Engida was sent to Paris to study painting at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1926 to 1933. According to Ladislas Farago, who interviewed Agegnehu in his home in Addis Ababa soon after the artist’s return from France, Agegnehu’s artistic abilities had been recognized by Haile Selassie, who arranged for him to study abroad. In 1926 Ras Tafari Mekonnen the future Emperor Haile Selassie was regent to Empress Zawditu and heir apparent to ...

Article

Alston, Charles Henry  

Robert Fay

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Alston was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a teenager, he served as the art editor for his high school's annual magazine. Alston earned both his undergraduate and M.A. degrees from Columbia University in New York City. He gained popular recognition for his cover illustrations for the periodicals The New Yorker and Collier's. In the 1930s Alston taught at the Harlem Art Workshop, where he was a proponent of muralism as a black art form, and from 1935 to 1936 Alston directed the Harlem Hospital murals for the Federal Arts Project. In 1950 he became the first African American teacher at the Art Students League in New York. His best-known works are the paintings Family and Walking, which are noted for their figurative content, sculptural form, and brilliant color, and which portray the experiences of African American families in the 1950s and 1960s.

Article

Andrews, Raymond  

Linda M. Carter

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

writer, was born in Plainview, Georgia, in Morgan County, the fourth of ten children of George Cleveland Andrews, a sharecropper and self‐taught folk artist, and Viola (Perryman) Andrews, also a sharecropper and, later, a newspaper columnist and the author of published short stories and an unpublished autobiography. Raymond's older brother, Benny Andrews, would become an internationally known painter and printmaker. Raymond Andrews's paternal grandmother, Jessie Rose Lee Wildcat Tennessee, was the daughter of an African American mother and a Native American father. Although she married Eddie Andrews, an African American who died in 1917, Raymond Andrews's paternal grandfather was James Orr, a plantation owner's son.

In 1935 Andrews and his family moved to a small house near his grandmother's home on land owned by Orr. Then in 1943 the Andrews family moved to the nearby Barnett Farm to work as sharecroppers ...

Article

Art and Illustration  

James Smalls

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 1998
Published online:
30 September 2010

Generally speaking, slavery and the slave trade have rarely been subject matter for art. Although many artists from different parts of the globe produced an image or two reflecting the practice of human enslavement, most avoided the topic altogether for political, ideological, or esthetic reasons. The visualization of slavery and the slave trade through art is an inherently political act that automatically positions an artist as either pro- or anti-slavery. The visual representation of slavery or the slave trade was for the most part instigated by and parallel in development with abolitionist movements.

With the increase in anti slavery sentiment throughout Europe and the United States during the late eighteenth century and throughout most of the nineteenth there developed a need for visual propaganda to support the cause Thus most graphic representations were didactic intended to stir sympathy and outrage in the viewer Most were rendered during the eighteenth and ...

Article

Bearden, Romare  

Amy Helene Kirschke

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

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 ...

Article

Beauty, concepts of  

David Dabydeen

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

1.William Hogarth's analysis of beauty

2.Joseph Spence and Joshua Reynolds

3.William Hogarth's Captain Lord George Graham in His Cabin

4.Slavery

Article

Bedia, José  

Carmen Oquendo-Villar

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

José Bedia was born in Havana, Cuba, where he pursued his formal artistic education at the Academia de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro and at the Instituto Superior de Arte. He left Cuba in 1991 and spent a brief time in Mexico before establishing himself in Miami in 1993. Bedia's work—drawings on paper; oil paintings on canvas; works in ink, acrylic, charcoal, oil crayons; and installations—derives most of its power from Cuba's African heritage, sometimes bringing to mind Kongo cosmograms (geometric designs which carry religious meanings) and Abakuá (Afro-Cuban all-male secret societies) ideographic writing. Texts in Spanish, Yoruba, or Bantu languages accompany many of his pieces. Despite the deep presence of African art Bedia's work, Cuban critic Gerardo Mosquera has labeled it postmodern Kongo art because it does not pretend to be a reenactment of original African art.

Bedia s adherence to local attitudes does not prevent him ...

Article

Beyene, Haile  

Ghirmai Negash

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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

Bigaud, Wilson  

Paulette Smith

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wilson Bigaud was introduced to so-called naive painting by Hector Hyppolite, one of Haiti's most famous artists. Deep melancholy and depression plagued Bigaud's exceptional but tragically short career. His famous canvas Paradis terrestre, recognized as one of the purest masterpieces of Haitian art, has single-handedly exported the magic of his vision of a black Adam to a broad international audience.

Bigaud's artistic talent was proclaimed to equal Brueghel's when he produced his Noces de Cana (Miracle of Cana, 1951), the famous 528-square-foot fresco decorating the Episcopal Cathedral of Port-au-Prince. Bigaud's impressive self-portrait (1958) best reveals the precision of his brushwork and the artist's desire for perfect control of his surroundings. In the painting he depicts himself in the apparel of the arrivé a Haitian term meaning the one who made it wearing a distinguished panama hat and dressed ...

Article

Biggers, John  

Amy Helene Kirschke

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

artist. Originally from Gastonia, North Carolina, Biggers grew up in the segregated South, the youngest of seven children. His childhood was marred by tragedy, with the deaths of his sister and his father, both from diabetes. John attempted to help his mother in any way he could, often helping with the laundry she took in to support the family. These images eventually appeared in his work.

With the sole responsibility of raising her large family Biggers s mother decided to send the two youngest boys to Lincoln Academy This was an important development in John s interest in African culture The principal of the school had served as a missionary in West Africa and was determined to instill a respect and an understanding of African culture in his students Biggers had the unusual experience of learning in detail about African culture an interest that grew as he developed as ...

Article

Blake, William  

Christopher Campbell

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

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

Boghossian, Skunder  

Rebecca Martin Nagy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

artist and educator, was born in Addis Ababa to an Ethiopian mother and an Armenian father who was a colonel in the Imperial Body Guard of Haile Selassie. Boghossian received early art training at Tafari Makonnen Secondary School and in private lessons with Stanislas Chojnacki, a historian of Ethiopian art and water-colorist, then librarian at the University College of Addis Ababa (later Haile Selassie I University and now Addis Ababa University), and with Jacques Godbout, a Canadian writer, filmmaker, and painter who taught French at the University College.

In 1955 Boghossian won second prize at an art exhibition held as part of Haile Selassie s Jubilee Anniversary Celebration and was awarded an imperial scholarship to study in London After attending classes at St Martin s School the Central School and the Slade School of Fine Art in London the young artist decided to transfer his studies to Paris where ...

Article

Bowling, Frank  

Charles Rosenberg

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a modernist painter, was born in Guyana. Bowling shaped his art to insert a black cultural sensibility into forms such as abstract painting, generally viewed as “Western,” insisting that art should not be stereotyped by race or national identity. Working on both sides of the Atlantic, his solo exhibits since 1962 number well over eighty.

Little has been written about Bowling's childhood. His mother owned a variety store in Bartica, Guyana, which he looked after when it was being built. At age fifteen, he was sent to England, where he joined the British Library to research Guyana's history and culture. He enrolled in 1957–1959 at Regent Street Polytechnic, Chelsea School of Art, and in 1959–1962 at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and the Royal College of Art. During this period he was a founder of the Young Commonwealth Artists Group, working with Billy Apple ...

Article

Bowser, David Bustill  

Susan B. Iwanisziw

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

commercial painter, artist, and activist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only known child of Jeremiah Bowser from Maryland and Rachel Bustill, daughter of the prosperous black abolitionist and educator Cyrus Bustill. The intermarriage among the region's free black Quaker families headed by Cyrus Bustill, Robert Douglass Sr., Jeremiah Bowser, and David Mapps created a dynamic force that benefited all African Americans and particularly spurred David s personal growth and accomplishments Jeremiah a member of the Benezet Philosophical Society served as a steward on the Liverpool lines and later it seems he was the proprietor of an oyster house near the intersection of 4th and Cherry Streets where David Bowser first hung up his sign as a commercial painter Later the Bowser family moved to the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia into a house at 481 North 4th Street where Bowser remained for the ...

Article

Breytenbach, Breyten  

Kennedy A. Walibora Waliaula

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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

Brown, Everald  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in rural Jamaica, Everald Brown moved to West Kingston in 1947 and became deeply interested in the religion of the Rastafarians. Having established a small unofficial church in 1960, he began making artworks for use in church ritual. These works are noted for their intuitive style and use of imagery from Rastafarian, Ethiopian Orthodox, Judaic, and Christian revivalist religious traditions. Brown claims that these images come to him through dreams and visions. Among his most acclaimed paintings is Ethiopian Apple (1970), which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Jamaica.

An accomplished sculptor as well as an intuitive painter, Brown has also gained fame for his carved musical instruments. From the early 1970s he lived in rural Jamaica, where he devoted himself to art that promoted spiritual and environmental concerns.

See also Art in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Article

Campeche, José  

Carlos Dalmau

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Campeche was the son of a free black father and a Spanish-born mother. Campeche started drawing at an early age, influenced by his father, who was an artisan. He later had contact with the Spanish painter Luis Paret, who was exiled for three years (1775–1778) in Puerto Rico. Paret, a more experienced and formally trained painter, greatly influenced the style of the gifted Campeche.

Campeche is best known for his paintings of religious images and political figures. Among his works we find some of the first artistic representations of blacks in colonial slave society: the Exvoto de la Sagrada Familia (around 1800, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Collection) and the street scene in Gobernador Ustariz (1789–1792, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Collection). Another example is the artist's lost Self-Portrait that survives in two copies done by Ramón ...

Article

Castera, Georges  

Joëlle Vitiello

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Georges Castera became interested in literature first in Haiti, then in high school in Montpellier, France, where he discovered the surrealists and the Négritude poets. It was during his stay in France that he also began to draw. Upon returning to Haiti, encouraged by Paul Laraque, he began to write in Creole. Castera has spent more than twenty years outside Haiti, mostly in Spain and the United States. He has always remained firmly connected to a popular imagination, both Haitian and international.

One of the best known Haitian poets Castera does not see himself as part of the artistic establishment despite his strong influence on the younger generation of poets Poetry is for him a fundamentally revolutionary act Writing in Creole implies an engagement in social and political issues as well as a reflection on the creative process Some of his poems parody the speeches of military leaders ...

Article

Colescott, Robert  

Glenda R. Carpio

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

painter, was born Robert Hutton Colescott in Oakland, California, to parents whose names are not now known but who were both trained musicians, one as a pianist, and the other, as a classically trained violist and sometime band mate of Louis Armstrong. His parents had moved from New Orleans to Oakland in 1919. As a child Robert was initially drawn to music, playing the drums and performing in local bands, but quite quickly he realized that his real gift was for drawing and painting.

Before receiving his formal education Colescott met the sculptor Sargent Claude Johnson through his father who, in order to supplement his income as a musician, worked as a porter on the Southern Pacific railroad, where Johnson was one of his co workers The sculptor became a family friend and a role model for Robert After serving for nearly four years in the army ...