Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas
(1898-1979)
Artist
Pioneering Africanist, one of the most influencial artist of the Harlem Renaissance

Born in Kansas in 1898 Aaron Douglas attended the University of Nebraska.He taught art in a Kansas City high school, and moved to New York where he studied with German illustrator Winold Reiss, incorporating African design elements into his otherwise realistic approach to painting. Soon his work came to the attention of Alain Locke, who incorporated six pages of Douglas artwork into his pioneering book, The New Negro.

He was commissioned to create a mural for Club Ebony, a popular Harlem night club, and later to create murals for Fisk University, the ballroom of Chicago's Sherman Hotel, and the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library. The Library murals, called "Aspects of Negro Life", are vibrant historic depictions of African-American life and is among Douglas' best know work, and another critically acclaimed series of illustrations for James Weldon Johnson's 1925 book. "God Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse" often called "The Father of Black American Art."

He broke away from a traditional realistic approach to create a more geometric style, incorporating circles, squares and triangles. His depiction of figures through silhouettes recalled the classical black silhouettes on Greek vases. He often combined such figures with muted earth tones creating the prescence of spirituality, celebrating the many facets of black life.

He became first president of the Harlem Artist Guild in 1928. He moved to Nashville, TN in 1940, founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 29 years.

PBS.org
The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage by Susan Altman
Afroamhistory.about.com
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