Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American artist and Art teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century.

Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School.

While growing up, Thomas displayed her artistic capabilities, and enjoyed making small pieces of artwork such as puppets, sculptures, and plates, mainly out of clay from the river behind her childhood home.

"[2]: 3  Her parents made this move despite that the family "kind of came down a bit," socially and economically, in leaving their upper-middle class life in Georgia.

[1]: 19-20 [2]: 27  Her artistic focus at Howard was on sculpture; the paintings she produced during her college education were described by Romare Bearden and Henry Henderson as "academic and undistinguished.

It has been suggested that might have been first African-American or American woman to earn a bachelor's art degree,[1]: 21 [10] however Mary Jane Patterson received her BA, in 1862, nearly 60 years earlier.

The program supported marionette performances and the distribution of student designed holiday cards which were given to soldiers at the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center.

During this time Thomas painted, especially in watercolor; while her style in the 1930s was described as still "quite traditional" and naturalistic, she has been called a "brilliant watercolorist.

[9]: 448 During the summers of 1930 through 1934, she attended Teachers College of Columbia University, earning her Masters in Art Education in 1934; her studies focused on sculpture, and she wrote her thesis on the use of marionettes.

[1]: 11,23 [7][3][9]: 447 In the summer of 1935, she further studied marionettes in New York City with the German-American puppeteer Tony Sarg, known as the father of modern puppetry in America.

Within twelve years after her first class at American, she began creating Color Field[clarification needed] paintings, inspired by the work of the New York School and Abstract Expressionism.

[24] Thomas was known to work in her home studio (a small living room), creating her paintings by "propping the canvas on her lap and balancing it against the sofa.

For this exhibition, she created Earth Paintings, a series of nature-inspired abstract works, including Resurrection (1966),[32] which in 2014 would be bought for the White House collection.

"[9]: 450  This exhibition received a supportive review from Helen Hoffman in The Washington Post of May 4, 1966, titled "colorful abstract reflects her spirit".

[24][9]: 452  Thomas denied labels placed upon her as an artist and would not accept any barriers inhibiting her creative process and art career, including her identity as a black woman.

Her younger sister John Maurice Thomas, who was named for their father and had a career as a librarian at Howard University, shared the house with her.

[35] Thomas believed that creativity should be independent of gender or race, creating works with a focus on accidental beauty and the abstraction of color.

Powell described Thomas's 1976 Azeleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music as "skillfully negotiating the slippery pathways between nature and society," and "epitomize[ing] the integrationist mood of the times.

[53] Writing in 1998, art historian Sharon Patton described Thomas's 1973 Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto as "one of the most Minimalist Color-Field paintings ever produced by an African-American artist.

"[24] Although Thomas did not receive a monograph[clarification needed] until 1998 when the Fort Wayne Museum exhibited a retrospective on the artist,[26] the lateness of in-depth scholarly attention is not representative of her legacy and influence on the realm of Visual Arts.

Jacob Kainen, her teacher at American University in autumn 1957,[1]: 30  asserts that "Thomas played a key role in the development of abstract painting throughout the mid 20th century."

[1]: 30  Kainen remembers her at that time as "a small, slim woman whose elegance of dress and manner and unmistakable firmness of character made the matter of her size irrelevant.

"[1]: 30  In the program of the 1966 Howard University Art Gallery's show "Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1959-1966," Kainen is quoted as describing her as "the Signac of current color painters.

[54] Watusi (Hard Edge) was eventually removed from the White House due to concerns about the piece fitting into the space in Michelle Obama's East Wing office.

"[34] The choice of Thomas for the White House collection was described as an ideal symbol for the Obama administration by The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter.

"[57] In 2016, the exhibition Alma Thomas, described in promotional materials as "the first comprehensive look at the artist’s work in nearly twenty years," and as presenting "a wide range of evolution of Thomas's work from the late 1950s to her death in 1978," was organized by The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

[58] The exhibit's promotional material noted that "Thomas's patterned compositions, energetic brushwork and commitment to color created a singular and innovative body of work."

[58] The Wall Street Journal described her in 2016 as a previously "underappreciated artist" who is more recently recognized for her "exuberant" works, noteworthy for their pattern, rhythm and color.

[61] In 2021, a new record price was set for Thomas's work when Alma's Flower Garden, painted in approximately 1968 to 1970, was deaccessioned by the Greenville County Museum of Art, which sold it in a private sale to an unidentified purchaser for $2.8 million.

In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.