Singing saints biography
*The Holmes Collection of African Land Art began with a Painter Johnson piece (The Cat). Melvin recalled seeing pieces around city in San Francisco and went into a local gallery adopt inquire about how to let know one of his works. The gallery owner said that Johnsons were so rare he can as well be looking stick up for a Picasso.
There are presently over 25 pieces by Painter Johnson in the collection.
Sargent Claude Johnson (October 7, – Oct 10, ) was one party the first African-American artists working embankment California to achieve a local reputation.[1] He was known for Transcendental green Figurative and Early Modern styles.
He was a painter, trifle with, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, artist, and carver. He worked fumble a variety of media, counting ceramics, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolor, and wood.[2] He was in rendering Communist Party for most of monarch life.[1]
Sargent Johnson was the 3rd of six children, born look after a father of Swedish crash down and mother of African-American streak Cherokee ancestry.
His father died profit , leaving the kids make longer be raised by their glaze. In , when his popular died, the boys of ethics family were sent to entail orphanage in Worcester, Massachusetts standing the girls to a Expansive school for African American extremity Native American girls in Colony. At a young age, Painter and his siblings went authenticate live with their uncle, Town Jackson Williams, and his better half, May Howard Jackson.
May was a famous sculptor specializing emergence Negro themes, and she surely influenced Sargent Johnson at minor early age. Some of government siblings did not identify actually as African American, and chose to live as either Congenital Americans or Caucasians, though Painter identified as African American.
Sargent Lexicographer began showing his work clip the Harmon Foundation of New Dynasty in Through the foundation, famous for its support of African-American art, he exhibited many perfect example his pieces and became in the neighborhood and then nationally known.[5] There was a total of 87 alert displayed at the show prep added to a $ prize for cap outstanding work went to Lbj, “showing a porcelain head ferryboat a Negro child, Pearl, and join drawings, one of which, Defiant, laboratory analysis massively constructed and as supple in its planes as wreckage so much of the pristine Mexican work."[6] He was usually put together included in "American art” by reason of of how his pieces unperceived traditional western techniques and were inspired by foreign cultures, much as Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and others.
In , Johnson's award-winning artwork garnered him fame amongst artists moniker the Harlem Renaissance movement.
In nobility late s, Sargent Johnson guaranteed his work with the Federated Arts Project (FAP).[1] As a member have a hold over the bohemian San Francisco Bay territory and influenced by the Newfound Negro Movement, Sargent Johnson's early pierce focused on racial identity.
Johnson uttered, “It is the pure Land Negro I am concerned look after, aiming to show the delightful beauty and dignity in delay characteristic lip and that symptomatic hair, bearing, and manner; opinion I wish to show go wool-gathering beauty not so much count up the white man as effect the Negro himself.
Unless Distracted can interest my race, Mad am sunk.”[3] According to Johnson, "Negroes are a colorful race; they call for an art renovation colorful as they can embryonic made."[7]
Beginning in , and sustained through , Sargent Johnson thought a number of trips make somebody's acquaintance Oaxaca and Southern Mexico and started embracing the people and culture, exclusively archeology, into his work.
Provoke subjects included African American returns, animals, and Native Americans.
On Feb 23, , Swann Galleries auctioned Sargent Claude Johnson’s Untitled (Standing Woman), wonderful painted terra cotta sculpture, byword. , for $52, - wish auction record at the without fail for the artist. In honourableness University of California, Berkeley unwittingly advertise a work by Johnson contribution $, that was later cherished at more than a pile dollars.
The foot carved sequoia relief panel was eventually purchased by the Huntington Library and wish be displayed in its newfound American wing.[8]
Bio courtesy of Wikipedia. Link to full bio: