Artist+16

Click on photo for Harlem Renaissance Art information Photo taken by James Van Der Zee, another Renaissance artist

Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas earned the title “The Father of African-American Art” after many years of hard work, and, before his death in 1979, he was recognized for making it possible for future African-American artists to express in their paintings and sculpting their experiences and movements as African-Americans. Douglas' distinct artistic form and dramatic ideas produced the most powerful legacy of the Renaissance, he had a lasting impact on the African-American art of today. He was a visual artist, and combined cubist rhythms and seductive art-deco dynamism with traditional African-American art to create a whole new visual style all his own that supported both hopes for a better future and current realities.



"...Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not white art painting black...let's bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then let's sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible. Let's create something transcendentally material, mystically objective. Earthy. Spiritually earthy. Dynamic." - Aaron Douglas

Works Citied

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