Aaron Douglas (1898 - 1979)

Born in Kansas in 1898, Douglas received a BA in art from the University of Nebraska. Douglas taught art in Kansas City for a few years until he decided to pursue a career as an artist and headed to New York to earn his MA from Columbia University. Douglas soon began integrating African design in his work which caught the attention of Alain Locke, who later called Douglas the "pioneering Africanist." Douglas designed and illustrated Alain Locke's The New Negro and contributed regularly to such widely read journals as the NAACP's The Crisis and The Urban League's Opportunity.In 1940 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 29 years.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/douglas.html

Into Bondage (1936)

Song of the Towers (1934)

Palmer Hayden (1890 - 1973)

Hayden was born Peyton Hedgeman in Wide Water, Virginia in 1890. His artistic name, Palmer Hayden, was taken from the corrupted pronunciation of Peyton Hedgeman by a commanding sergeant during World War I. Hayden was among the first African American artists to use African subjects and designs in his painting. His 1926 still life Fetiche et Fleurs highlights a Fang mask from Gabon and Bakuba raffia cloth from the Congo. It won the prestigious Harmon Foundation's Gold Award. With the award and with a grant from a patron, Hayden was able to continue his studies in Paris, where he further explored his interest in ethnic subject matter. He returned to the United States in 1932 and worked steadily over the next several years for the U.S. government, including the U.S. Treasury Art Project and the WPA. In his later works Hayden focused on the African American experience, capturing both rural gatherings in the South and the urban milieu of New York. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/printable_pages/artfocus_03_print.html

Midsummer Night in Harlem (1938)

Janitor That Paints (1939)

Fetiche et Fleurs (1926)

Archibald Motley (1891 - 1981)

Born in 1891 in New Orleans and raised in Chicago, Motley knew as a child that he wanted to be an artist. He studied art at the Institute of Chicago and in 1928, became the second African American artist to have a solo exhibition in New York City. Motley's early artistic endeavors include Old Snuff Dipper, a realistic portrait a working class southerner that won a Harmon Foundation award. After winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929, Motley left for Paris where he painted Parisian genre scenes, including Blues. When Motley returned to Chicago in 1930, he began painting portraits and genre scenes of the African American community in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, home to most of the city's African American population. Although he never lived in Harlem, his depiction of contemporary African American social life identified him with the Harlem Renaissance.

Nightlife (1943)

Jockey Club (1929)

Mending Socks (1924)

Old Snuff Dipper

Ellis Wilson (1899 - 1977)

Ellis Wilson, whose father was also an artist, was born in Mayfield, Kentucky in 1899. Wilson went north to Chicago in the early 1920s to study and participate in the African American arts movement that was emerging in urban centers. He graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1923 and later moved to New York, where he participated in WPA art programs and exhibited with the Harmon Foundation, an organization that promoted the works of African American artists. In 1944 Wilson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel in the South and paint ordinary African Americans at work and at home. During this time he painted African Americans making turpentine, harvesting tobacco, and selling goods at the open air markets of Charleston, South Carolina. Wilson also drew his inspiration from his travels to Haiti, where he painted peasants at work. Wilson is probably best known for his painting, Funeral Procession, which was displayed in the living room in the popular television sit-com, THE COSBY SHOW.

Funeral Procession (1950s)

Field Workers (1948-1951)

Jacob Lawrence (1917 - 2000)

Jacob Lawrence, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, was born in 1917 and is best known for his series of narrative paintings depicting important moments in African American history. Lawrence was introduced to art when in his early teens, Lawrence's mother enrolled him in Utopia Children's Center, which provided an after-school art program in Harlem. By the mid-1930s, he was regularly participating in art programs at the Harlem Art Workshop and the Harlem Community Art Center where he was exposed to leading African American artists of the time, including Augusta Savage and Charles Alton, the director of the Harlem Art Workshop and, later, professor of art at Howard University.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/lawrence.html

The Library (1960)

The Seamstress, 1946

Fulton and Nostrand , 1958

Norman LewisNorman Lewis, born in 1909 in New York, was the first major African American abstract expressionist. Lewis, like fellow artist, Jacob Lawrence attended the art workshops in Harlem. At the art centers Lewis studied African art and was introduced to Howard University professor, Alain Locke's ideas about art, which Locke believed, should derive from African themes and aesthetics. However Lewis saw limitations in the New Negro ideals and questioned its effectiveness in expressing his own identity and interests of the African American community. Lewis later moved from abstract figuration to modernism, as exemplified by artists Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso. His paintings from this time are devoid of realistic imagery and focused more on conceptual expression, often referring to African American settings and culture. Lewis, always active in the art community, in the 1960s was a founding member of the Spiral Group, a group of African American artists who sought to contribute through their art to the civil rights movement.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/nlewis.html

Yellow Hat (1936)

Norman Lewis, Confrontation, 1972

Phantasy II. 1946

Augusta Savage (1892 - 1962)

Augusta Savage, who was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida in 1892, began molding clay at an early age. Despite great opposition from her family, Savage was determined to pursue a career in the arts as a sculptor. She moved to New York to study at Cooper Union, where she was soon commissioned to create a portrait bust of W.E.B. Du Bois and other African American leaders including Marcus Garvey. In 1924 the sculpture of her nephew, Gamin, won the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship which gave her the opportunity to study in Paris for one year. After returning home from Europe, Savage shared her art and experiences through teaching in the Harlem community. In 1932, Augusta established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts to provide adult art education. She also later became the first director of the Harlem Community Arts Center, where she played a crucial role in the development of young African American artists. This art center became a model for others across the country, including Chicago's Southside Community Art Center.

Gamin (1929)

The Harp (1939)

HARLEM GIRL (LENORE), 1935

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)

One of the most famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance was Louis Armstrong. Having come from a poor family in New Orleans, Armstrong began to perform with bands in small clubs, and play at funerals and parades around town in New Orleans.Louis Armstrong is one of the most appreciated jazz artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and of all times. People learned to appreciate both jazz, and African American music even more, because of this man. Armstrong played music up until the day he died at 70 years old, on July 6, 1971.

Billie Holiday(Lady Day) (1915-1959)

During the 1950’s Billie Holiday rose as a social phenomenon. Born Eleanora Fagan grew up in Baltimore. As a teenager she began singing in jazz clubs.A musical legend Billie Holiday died at the age of 44. She pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She co-wrote a few songs that became jazz standards. "God Bless the Child," "Don't Explain," "Fine and Mellow," and "lady Sings the Blues."

Chick Webb (1905-1939)

Born William Henry Webb, know as Chick Webb was and American jazz ad swing music drummer. Born in Baltimore, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine. He worked as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums and he first played professionally at age 11. At the age of 17 he move to New York City and began leading his own band in Harlem. Drumming legend Buddy Rich cited Webb’s technique and performances as heavily influential on his own drumming and referred to Webb as “the daddy of them all.” At the Savory in “Battle of the Bands” Chicks often won and was deemed “King of Swing.”