Aaron Douglas
Bio and Portrait
Click on the images below to view a larger image.

Doug1.jpg (56880 bytes) Aaron Douglas (1898-1979)
Window Cleaning
1935, oil on canvas
30 by 24 in.
 douglas3.gif (29466 bytes) Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers, 1934,
douglas2.gif (25862 bytes) Study for Aspects of Negro Life: An Idyll of the Deep South, 1934 douglas4.gif (20400 bytes) Marian Anderson

 

DougPort.bmp (45598 bytes)

 Aaron Douglas was the Harlem Renaissance artist whose work best exemplified the 'New Negro' philosophy. He painted murals for public buildings and produced illustrations and cover designs for many black publications including The Crisis and Opportunity. In 1940 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and tought for twenty nine years.

"...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

Source: http://www.iniva.org/harlem/aaron.html

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