Black Abstractionism

Black Abstractionism can be found in painting, sculpture, collage, drawing, graphics, ceramics, installation, mixed media, craft and decorative arts.

"[10][11][22][23] Howardena Pindell and her abstractions were rejected by the Studio Museum in Harlem, encouraging her to "go downtown and show with the white boys", and scolded for making work that was "not sufficiently black".

[28] In recent years, art historians, museum curators, and gallery dealers have shown increased interest in Black abstract painters and sculptors.

[48] Sargent Claude Johnson was creating abstract work that married geometric shapes and forms rooted in African aesthetics as early as 1934.

[45] In 1945, he created two abstract pieces, "Breakfast", an oil painting, and "Lovers", a terracotta sculpture, that are housed in the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art.

[52][53][54] The Hall of Negro Life attracted more than 400,000 visitors,[53][54] who entered through a lobby featuring murals by Aaron Douglas,[53] a modern abstract painter who played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance.

[55] The Hall of Negro Life showcased works on loan from the Harmon Foundation,[53][54] including paintings, sculpture, and graphic art work by modern, figurative and representational artists, including Richmond Barthe, Leslie Boling, Hilda Brown, Samuel A. Countee, Allen Rohan Crite, Arthur Diggs, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Malvin Gray Johnson, Sargent Johnson, Henry Letcher, Archibald J. Motley, Jr., Henry O. Tanner, Laura Wheeler Waring, James L. Wells, and Hale Woodruff.

[60] In addition to Brown, the participating artists included Charles Alston, Richmond Barthe, Robert Blackburn, Aaron Douglas, Elton Clay Fax, Rex Goreleigh, Palmer C. Hayden, William Hayden, Louise E. Jefferson, Wilmer Jennings, Malvin Gray Johnson, Sargent Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Ronald Joseph, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Richard Lindsey, Ronald Moody, Archibald Motley, Jr., Robert Neal, Albert Alexander Smith, Dox Thrash, James Lesesne Wells, Hale Woodruff, and others.

[67][70] In 1942, Hale Woodruff initiated Exhibitions of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists in America, an annual juried show that included a cash prize at Clark Atlanta University.

[77] That same year, the Mountain View Officers' Club at Fort Huachuca, a predominantly black military base during World War II, presented Exhibition of the Work of 37 Negro Artists, featuring drawings, paintings, and sculptures.

[88] Ed Clark began creating work with nontraditional painting items, such as brooms, rollers, rags, and hands, to complete his canvases.

[90] In 1957, Clark is credited with being the first artist of any race to exhibit a non-traditional, shaped canvas, presenting his work at Brata Gallery,[89][91][92] a New York City cooperative he co-founded with Al Held, Yayoi Kusama, and others.

For more than two years, Smokehouse filled vacant lots, barren walls, pocket parks, and neighborhood grocery store signs with abstract murals and sculptures as a way to engage the residents of and visitors to Harlem.

"[6] In the years surrounding the Smokehouse murals in Harlem, several artists, including Frank Bowling, Sam Gilliam, Alma Thomas and Jack Whitten, were expanding the boundaries of Black art and abstraction.

[102][103] In 1969, Charles McGee opened Gallery 7, a Detroit, Michigan exhibition space dedicated to promoting Black abstract and minimalist artists.

[105][106] In 2024, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit mounted a tribute show, Kinship: The Legacy of Gallery 7, featuring the work of Naomi Dickerson, Lester Johnson, Allie McGhee, Charles McGee, Harold Neal, Gilda Snowden, Robert Stull, and Elizabeth Youngblood.

[117] The De Luxe Show is credited with being one of the first racially integrated art exhibitions in the United States,[12][29] and more than 1,000 people attended the opening.

[117] The show organizer, Peter Bradley, selected forty abstract works by nineteen artists, including Ed Clark, Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, Clement Greenberg, Virginia Jaramillo, Kenneth Noland, and others.

[102] In 1972, Alma Thomas, a Columbus, Georgia native and the first graduate of the Howard University College of Fine Arts, became the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum.

[17] In 1980, MoMA PS 1 presented Afro-American Abstraction: An Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture by Nineteen Black American Artists, in Long Island City, Queens.

[137][18] In 1990, the Museum Overholland in Amsterdam, Netherlands, presented Black USA, the first European museum-organized exhibit of African-American art,[138] and featured the work of Jules Allen, Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott, David Hammons, Nathaniel Hunter, and Martin Puryear.

[143] The show featured several black abstract artists who began their careers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which may explain why the National Endowment for the Arts rejected the curatorial team's grant proposal to fund the exhibition.

[144] The exhibit paid tribute to Black Dimensions in Art, an arts organization in the Capital area, and featured abstract artists Stephen Tyson of Clifton Park, the show's curator; Nanette Carter, Ed Clark, Gregory Coates, Herbert Gentry, Bill Hutson, Howardena Pindell, George Simmons of Albany, Frank Wimberley, and others.

[147] In 2007, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery presented Decoding Myth: African American Abstraction, 1945–1975, featuring the work of Charles Alston, Harold Cousins, Beauford Delaney, Sam Gilliam, Norman Lewis, Alma Thomas, and Hale Woodruff.

[149] African American Abstract Masters featured the work of Betty Blayton, Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, Herbert Gentry, Bill Hutson, Sam Middleton, Joe Overstreet, Thomas Sills, Merton Simpson.

[149] In 2012, the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, an exhibition that showcased paintings, sculpture, prints, and photographs by forty-three Black artists, including abstract work by Thornton Dial,[150] Felrath Hines,[151] Kenneth Victor Young,[152] and others.

[165] Magnetic Fields artists include Candida Alvarez, Betty Blayton, Chakaia Booker, Lilian Thomas Burwell, Nanette Carter, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Deborah Dancy, Abigail DeVille, Maren Hassinger, Jennie C. Jones, Evangeline Montgomery, Howardena Pindell, Mavis Pusey, Shinique Smith, Gilda Snowden, Kianja Strobert, and Brenna Youngblood; and four alumna of the Howard University art department: Alma Woodsey Thomas, Mildred Thompson, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, and Sylvia Snowden.

The featured artists included Lillian T. Burwell, Sam Gilliam, Howardena Pindell, Junius Redwood, Frank Smith, and Hubert C. Taylor.

[173] This exhibit was organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens (Memphis, Tennessee), and confirms that during the latter part of the 20th century that there was not a singular ideology or an "all-Black" style.

[175] Among the Black artists to have their abstract work featured in the exhibit were Skunder Boghossian, who was born in Africa and lived in the United States,[176] and David Driskell.