Celebrate Black History Month in the American galleries. Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) trained at th

Celebrate Black History Month in the American galleries. Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and held a distinguished position as a faculty member at Howard University in Washington, D.C. from 1930 until 1977. In 1937, Jones was awarded a prestigious General Education Board Fellowship to study at the Académie Julien in Paris. There she took up oil painting and concentrated on street scenes, still lifes, and portraits, experimenting with a brighter palette and Impressionist techniques, as in this portrait of the actor Leigh Whipper, painted after Jones’s return to the United States in the fall of 1938.Jones’s early work was also influenced by key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Alain Locke, who encouraged her to pursue socially charged issues and themes related to her African heritage. Though she frequently encountered racism in the art world and even solicited white colleagues to submit works on her behalf to juried exhibitions, Jones overcame what she referred to as a “double handicap” as an African American and female painter. Over her seven-decade-long career, Jones experimented with diverse media, subject matter, and styles, owing to her extensive travels to Martha’s Vineyard, Haiti, France, and Africa. An influential teacher, Jones in turn shaped the next generation of artists studying at Howard University, including Elizabeth Catlett, Alma Thomas, and David C. Driskell, among many others.Posted by Margarita Karasoulas -- source link
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