Printmaking materials

About the Item Green-toned modern abstract print by American artist, Charles White. The print depicts a woman in a flowy shroud against a green-toned background. Signed by the artist at the bottom right. Framed and matted in a gold and black frame.

The African American painter, printmaker, and teacher Charles Wilbert White was born in Chicago. He attended The Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York City. White taught at the George Washington Carver School in New York from 1943 to 1945 and was artist-in-residence at Howard University in Washington, DC, in 1945. The artist executed several murals in various cities throughout the United States, many under the sponsorship of the WPA. His work shows the influence of the styles of the leading Mexican muralists, reflecting his study with David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera at the Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico. In 1940 the Associated Negro Press commissioned a mural for the Chicago Public Library. He completed another at the Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1943 and, late in his career, at the Mary McLeod Bethune Library in Los Angeles. His works, as seen on this videodisc, frequently feature the strong, stylized forms of African-American figures set against flattened, faceted "walls." The fragmented settings may contain private and public imagery, for example urban structures that are small in scale, making the large figures all the more prominent, monumental, and expressive. Charles White’s commitment to creating powerful images of African Americans—what his gallerist and, later, White himself described as “images of dignity”—was unwavering over the course of his four-decade career. White believed that art had a role to play in changing the world: “Art must be an integral part of the struggle. It can’t simply mirror what’s taking place. It must adapt itself to human needs. It must ally itself with the forces of liberation. The fact is, artists have always been propagandists. I have no use for artists who try to divorce themselves from the struggle.” White spent most of his career in Chicago and Los Angeles. He died in 1979. White's work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

H 30.25 in X W 22.75 in X D 1.5 in

H 15.5 in. x W 7.75 in.