Information AboutAaron Douglas |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT AARON DOUGLAS | |
| african-american artists | |
| american painters | |
| african americans | |
| people from kansas | |
| university of nebraska-lincoln alumni | |
| 1900 births | |
| 1979 deaths | |
| fisk university alumni | |
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by Aaron Douglas in oil, 1939 .]] Aaron Douglas ( May 26 , 1898 – February 3 , 1979 ) was an American painter and a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance . EARLY LIFE A native of Topeka, Kansas , 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. DuBois and Alain Locke , who were pressing for young African American artists to express their African heritage and African American folk culture in their 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. 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 Arthur Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture ). LATER LIFE In 1937, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee , where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 29 years. Coinciding with this move was a shift to a more traditional painting style, including portraits and landscapes like the one at right. STYLE |
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