Art Fact Friday #21 Charles W White
- William Mandela Matthews
- Dec 16, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 22, 2023
African American painter, printmaker, and teacher. An important figure in the Chicago Black Renaissance. The artist completed murals in a multitude of cities throughout the United States, many with the financial support of the WPA. Works by the artist magnify strong, stylized forms of African American figures with flattened, faceted "walls." The artist is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Born April 2, 1918, in Chicago, Charles Wilbert White, Jr. attended The Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York City. 1938, White worked for the Illinois Art Project, a partner of Works Progress Administration. He was shown at the Chicago Coliseum; included in Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro, commemorating the 75th anniversary of Thirteenth Amendment.1938 he taught at the Southside Community Art Center. 1939 he finished Five Great American Negroes, held at Howard University Gallery of Art.
1940 the Associated Negro Press sponsored a mural for the Chicago Public Library. 1941 taught at Dillard University] He served in Hampton Institute in Virginia commissioned a mural as well, 1943. White was drafted to the US Army during WWII but was discharged in 1943 after developing tuberculosis. White did not paint for three years recovering Veterans hospital in Beacon, New York. From 1943 to 1945 White was an instructor at the George Washington Carver School in New York. As well as artist-in-residence, Howard University, Washington, DC. The American Contemporary Artists (ACA) Gallery hosted White in 1947.
1953, White published six reproductions of his ink-and-charcoal drawings, entitled 'Charles White: Six Drawings' in partnership with Masses and Mainstream. In 1956, due to breathing difficulties he moved to Los Angeles.
White’s works found new admirers in the Black Consciousness movement of the 1960s. Artists of the 1930s were finding new eyes in the 1960s. From 1965 until his death of congestive heart failure in 1979, White taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. White was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1972. In 1976 Whites’ works were included in Two Centuries of Black American Art, LACMA's first exhibition exclusively for African American Artists.
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