Aaron Douglas (artist)

Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas, to Aaron and Elizabeth Douglas. He developed an interest in art during his childhood and was encouraged in his pursuits by his mother. Douglas graduated from Topeka High School in 1917. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1922. In 1925, Douglas moved to New York City, settling in Harlem. Just a few months after his arrival he began to produce illustrations for both The Crisis and Opportunity, the two most important magazines associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He also began studying with Winold Reiss, a German artist who had been hired by Alain Locke to illustrate The New Negro. Reiss's teaching helped Douglas develop the modernist style he would employ for the next decade. Douglas’s engagement with African and Egyptian design brought him to the attention of W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Locke, who were pressing for young African American artists to express their African heritage and African American folk culture in their art.

Douglas was heavily influenced by the African culture he painted for. His natural talent plus his newly acquired inspiration allowed Douglas to be considered the "Father of African American arts." That title led him to say," Do not call me the Father of African American Arts, for I am just a son of Africa, and paint for what inspires me."

For the next several years, Douglas was an important part of the circle of artists and writers we now call the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to his magazine illustrations for the two most important African-American magazines of the period, he illustrated books, painted canvases and murals, and tried to start a new magazine showcasing the work of younger artists and writers. It was during the early 1930s that Douglas completed the most important works of his career, his murals at Fisk University and at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).

Throughout his early career, Douglas looked for opportunities to increase his knowledge about art. In 1928–29, Douglas studied African and Modern European art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania on a grant from the foundation. In 1931 he traveled to Paris, where he spent a year studying more traditional French painting and drawing techniques at the Academie Scandinave.

In 1939, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 27 years. Coinciding with this move was a shift to a more traditional painting style, including portraits and landscapes like the one at right. Aaron Dtted figures, as well as by portraits, landscapes, and murals, Douglas's art fused modernism with ancestral African images, including fetish motifs, masks, and artifacts. His work celebrates African American versatility and adaptability, depicting people in a variety of settings—from rural and urban scenes to churches to nightclubs. His illustrations in books by leading bt Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Beg20s, Douglas's illustrations appeared in books by James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, and other prominent black writers, activists, and intellectuals. They were als tokell in an essayremember the painting very well. I spent hours he recalled: "I was the only black student there. Because I washstanding, Douglas longed to draw from an undraped model and felt constrained by the "Victorian attitudes" that prevented the school from using nudes in the classroom.

The style Aaron Douglas developed in the 1920s synthesized aspects of modern European, ancient Egyptian, and West African art. His best-known paintings are semi-abstract, and feature flat forms, hard edges, and repetitive geometric shapes. Bands of color radiate from the important objects in each painting, and where these bands intersect with other bands or other objects, the color changes.

• Illustrations for The Crisis and Opportunity, 1925–1939
• Illustrations for James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones, 1927
• Mural at Club Ebony, 1927 (destroyed)
• Illustrations for Paul Morand, Black Magic, 1929
• Harriet Tubman, mural at Bennett College, 1930
• Symbolic Negro History, murals at Fisk University, 1930
• Dance Magic, murals for the Sherman Hotel, Chicago, 1930–31
• Aspects of Negro Life, murals at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1934 [1]
• Illustrations included in selected editions of Countee Cullen's Caroling Dusk and Alain Locke's New Negro. Illustrations also published in periodicals such as Vanity Fair, New York Sun, Boston Transcript, and American Mercury.

• Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present (Pantheon, 1993)
• "Douglas, Aaron". American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 6:789-790.
• Kirschke, Amy Helene. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance. Jackson, Miss. : University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
• Myers, Aaron. "Douglas, Aaron." Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2002. CD-ROM. 2002 ed. Redmond, Wa. : Microsoft, 2001.
• http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/adouglas.html
• http://www.aarondouglas.ku.edu

• Aaron Douglas: Depression Era Murals from American Studies at the University of Virginia

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