Hale Woodruff

Hale Aspacio Woodruff (August 26, 1900 – September 6, 1980) was an American artist known for his murals, paintings, and prints.

Early life, family and education

Woodruff was born in Cairo, Illinois, in on August 26, 1900. He grew up in a black family in Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended the local segregated schools. He studied at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Harvard Fogg Art Museum.

Woodruff won an award from the Harmon Foundation in 1926, which enabled him to spend four "crucial years studying in Paris from 1927–31."Smith, Roberta
"In Electric Moments, History Transfigured - Hale Woodruff’s Talladega Murals, in 'Rising Up,' at N.Y.U."
''The New York Times'', August 13, 2013. He studied at the and the Académie Moderne. He learned in the city's museums as well, while getting to know other expatriates, including Henry Ossawa Tanner, the leading African-American artist. Woodruff met leading figures of the French avant-garde and began collecting African art, which was a source of inspiration for many other modernists, including Pablo Picasso.

He returned to the U.S. in 1931 and married Theresa Ada Baker that year. They had one son, Roy.

Art career

Woodruff reluctantly returned to the U.S. due to financial strains from the Great Depression. He worked as an art teacher to support himself. In 1931 he began teaching art at Atlanta University, a historically black college, eventually developing a department of which he was chair and the core of the University's art collection. He taught classes at the university's Laboratory High School, as well as for students at Morehouse and Spelman, a related college for black women. He founded the annual competition, ''Atlanta University Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists'', which featured many African-American artists. This was conducted from 1942 to 1970.

In 1936 Woodruff went to Mexico to study as an apprentice under the famed muralist Diego Rivera, learning his fresco technique and becoming interested in portrayal of figures. He returned to Atlanta and continued teaching. He began traveling to Talladega College in Alabama to teach and work on a commission for a series of murals.

After his return to the United States in 1936, Woodruff applied his understanding of Post-Impressionism and Cubism to painting and printmaking for social advocacy. Woodruff was inspired by the racism and poverty African Americans in the South faced during the Great Depression.

During the 1950s Woodruff had three solo exhibition at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery.

Woodruff's best-known work is the three-panel '' Amistad'' Mutiny murals (1938), which he completed for the Savery Library at Talladega College. The murals are entitled: ''The Revolt'', ''The Court Scene'', and ''Back to Africa'', portraying events related to the 1839 Mende slave revolt on the Spanish '' Amistad'' ship. This occurred after the United States and Britain had prohibited the Atlantic slave trade, but Spain continued to take slaves from Africa. The murals depict events on the ship when the captive mutinied, the U.S. Supreme Court trial, and the Mende people's later repatriation to Africa.

An image of the ship is embedded in a design in the lobby floor of the library. College tradition prohibits walking "on" the ship, despite its central location. The library has another series of three Woodruff murals exploring events related to the black college's role in African-American history, including freedmen enrolling after the American Civil War and the construction of campus buildings.

Woodruff painted two other surviving murals, though these were not frescoes but oil on canvas of monumental size. ''The Negro in California History--Settlement and Development'' (1949), was one of two panels commissioned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles; the other panel was created by Charles Alston. Woodruff also completed six panels around 1950-1951 called ''Art of the Negro'', now at at the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries.Dunkley, Tina
"Hale Woodruff 1900-1980"
''New Georgia Encyclopedia'', December 6, 2013. Web. 28 May 2015.

In 1942, even with World War II raging, Woodruff initiated the Atlanta University Art Annuals, an exhibit and competition that was conducted until 1970. These 29 national art exhibitions were a key venue for black artists.

In 1946, Woodruff joined the faculty at New York University in Manhattan. He taught there for more than 20 years before retiring in 1968. Malkia Roberts was among his many New York students.

Woodruff died in New York City on September 6, 1980.

Exhibition history

Solo exhibitions

1976
*''Ancestral Memory''

the Studio Museum in Harlem

Group exhibitions

1985
*''Hidden Heritage'', Bellevue Art Museum and Art Association of America

1976
*''Two Centuries of Black Art'', Los Angeles County Museum of Art

1971
*Newark Museum

1967
*New York University
*San Diego Art Museum
*Los Angeles County Museum of Art
*Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
*Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
*City College of New York

1958
*New Bertha Schaffer Gallery, New York

1955
*University of North Carolina

1951
*Atlanta University

Legacy

In 2012 the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia organized an exhibition of Woodruff's murals created for Talladega College. The exhibition of six of the restored murals toured the United States including the African American Museum (Dallas), the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Chicago Cultural Center, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

References

Further reading

* David C Driskell; Leonard Simon; Los Angeles County Museum of Art
''Two Centuries of Black American Art''
(Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House, 1976) ,

''Hale Woodruff 50 Years of His Art,''
(New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1979)
* Samella Lewis
''African American Art and Artists,''
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) , ,
* Kenkeleba Gallery (New York, N.Y.)
''The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945–1975''
(New York: Kenkeleba House, ©1991)
* Marika Herskovic
''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s: An Illustrated Survey,''
(New York School Press, 2003.) . pp. 358–361
* Crystal Britton, ''African American Art: The Long Struggle,'' (New Line Books, 1998)
* Samella Lewis, ''African American Art and Artists,'' (University of California Press, 1994)
* Sharon Patton, ''African-American Art,'' (Oxford University Press, 1998)
* Romare Bearden, ''A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present,'' (Pantheon, 1993)

External links

"Amistad Murals"
Talladega College

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woodruff, Hale A.
1900 births
1980 deaths
Artists from Indiana
Herron School of Art and Design alumni
African-American painters
African-American printmakers
20th-century African-American people