ARTNOIR'S - AFRICAN/AMERICAN ART HISTORY101

ARTNOIR'S AFRICAN/AMERICAN ART HISTORY 101

WILLIAM HENRY JOHNSON (1901-1970)

jitter In 1932 Johnson wrote "my aim is to express in a natural way what I feel, what is in me, both rhythmically and spiritually, all that which in time has been saved up in my family of primitiveness and tradition, and which is now concentrated in me."

Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina. He moved to Harlem in 1918, and three years later enrolled in the school of the National Academy of Design. He departed for Franch in 1926, where he lived, worked and exhibited in Paris and the Riviera. He returned home to South Carolina briefly, then went back to Denmark where he met and married Holcha Krake, a Danish textile artist. They returned to New York in 1938.

Johnson joined the WPA Federal Art Project and was assigned to a teaching post at the HARLEM COMMUNITY ART CENTER. There he met other artists such as Selma Burke, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, and Gwendolyn Knight. Here he immersed himself in the sights and sounds of Harlem's diverse African-American community. "He casptured in paint the gyrations of the contemporary dance craze, the 'jitterbug'." Johnson depicted the hallmarks of urban fashion - the broad-shouldered dresses and suits, stylishly cocked women's hats, platform shoes, and vibrantly colored accessories.

One can see Johnson's roots envisioned in his works - the endless fields of cotton and tobacco, one-room wooden shacks, rickety wagons pulled by powerful mules and oxen, and stoic, denim-clad black farm workers. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Johnson addressed the heroism and humor, and segregation of the armed forces. He also focused on the humanitarian contributions of black individuals.

His first major solo exhibition was in New York in May 1941 at the Alam Reed Galleries. "It was an auspicious beginning" for his second American career. After his wife's death in the winter of 1943, his paintings, in the spring, were included in major exhibitions in Atlanta, Newark, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Later, he returned to his family and friends to reflect on his recent interest in direct, yet spiritual interpretations of the African-American life. An expatriate during most of the 1930s, Johnson returned home with a clear vision expressing "the rhythmic and spiritual" aspects of his inner and outer worlds.