Born sometime in the late 19th century to African American and Native American parents, Edmonia Lewis rose to success in Boston, Massachusetts as a sculptor specializing in abolitionist and Civil War themes. The details of her life are uncertain even today since Lewis seemed to create a public persona of herself as an artist. According to her own accounts, her given name was “Wildfire”, by her mother.
Lewis’ educational was paid for by her elder brother, Samuel, who had gained wealth during the gold rush.While attending Oberlin College in 1862, Lewis was accused of both stealing supplies and attempting to poison two white classmates. Sometime before the trial she was jumped and beaten so severely that she was forced to a bed for several weeks. Lewis was acquitted and then moved to Boston to pursue an active career as a sculptor.
One of her sculptures, Forever Free, completed in 1868 was finished and sent to a wealthy Boston abolitionist with no commission.Her most famous work, Death of Cleopatra, depicts Cleopatra after she has been bitten by the asp. The piece achieved critical acclaim but was not sold and was put into storage and lost until 1988. It now resides in the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art. The time and place of her dead are still unknown, although she had been living in Rome for the latter part of her life.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1955, Kerry James Marshall moved to south central Los Angeles as a young child and realized he wanted to be an artist from an early age. A quote by Marshall on his personal history gives great insight into the motivations and themes of his art,You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to go.
Marshall learned at a very early age that he wanted to be an artist. After looking through a teacher’s scrapbook containing random images such as Christmas cards, photographs and magazine images, Marshall decided that he wanted to “make pictures like these.”Kerry James Marshall has released numerous collections including Mementos, which commemorates political and cultural icons of the 1960’s such as JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Marshall uses many different sources to complement the uniqueness of black culture and is a supporter of the Black Arts movement, which sprang from the Black Power movement.William Tolliver was another influential artist in African American culture.
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1951 as the second of fourteen children, Tolliver spent most of his life cultivating his love of art. His self-taught style based on classic artists like Van Gogh and Monet allowed him to develop his talents separate from the influence of elitist institutes.Tolliver utilized many styles in his paintings such as cubism, realism and impressionism and is often attributed with a photographic memory. His works are included in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and he also won a commission from the Olympic Games Committee to create a piece depicting “the spirit of Georgia.”His death in 2000 was a loss to the artistic community in general but it is also argued that artists rarely see the level of critical and commercial success in their lifetime as Tolliver had experienced.
