Art Fact Friday #10 September 29th 2023
- William Mandela Matthews
- Sep 29, 2023
- 2 min read
Alma Woodsey Thomas an important role model for artists, and recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. The first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at Whitney Museum of American Art. She was the first graduate of Howard University's art department. In addition to teaching ,also exhibiting her paintings at the White House.
Best known for abstract paintings she created after a 35-year career at Washington's Shaw Junior High School. In 2021, Thomas's painting Alma's Flower Garden sold for $2.8 million.
Born Sept 22, 1891, Thomas could not enter art museums as a child, despite an interest in arts. In Washington D.C.,Thomas attended her first art classes at Armstrong Technical High School. Thomas earned her teaching degree from University of the District of Columbia. 1915-1921 she taught kindergarten at Thomas Garrett Settlement House Wilmington, Delaware.
Thomas attended Howard University in 1921, at age 30 starting in home economics, switching to fine art after studying under James V. Herring. 1924 she earned a Bachelors in Fine Arts , becoming the first graduate from the university's fine arts program, and first American woman to do so. In 1924, Thomas began teaching art at Shaw Junior High School, until her retirement in 1960.
In 1936, she founded the School Arts League Project, to bring art opportunities to children.
1943, Thomas founded the Barnett-Aden Gallery, the first successful Black-owned private art gallery in the United States. 1958, Thomas visited Western Europe with Temple University students. 1950, she began a decade of studies at American University. In the 1950s her style evolved from figurative to cubism and abstract expressionism.
Thomas became a full-time, artist at 68 or 69 years old. 1960, she began creating Color Field paintings, She working out of the kitchen. Watusi1963 her technique involved drawing faint pencil lines across the canvas to create shapes and patterns, filling in the canvas with paint afterwards. March on Washington 1964 National Gallery of Art 2022. A detail of the painting became a 2005 U.S. postage stamp. Pansies in Washington 1969 at the National Gallery of Art in 2022.
Her first retrospective exhibit 1966, Gallery of Art, Howard University, 34 works from 1959 to 1966. Earth Paintings, nature-inspired abstract works, Resurrection 1966 was added to the White House collection 2014. 1972, age 81, she became the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art. Alma Thomas passed February 1978, Howard University Hospital.
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