Dox Thrash's Visceral Portraits of African-Americans

Greetings to all my inked up comrades, and welcome to 2015! This year promises to bring you a lot of new articles on artists, exhibitions and books on our favorite subject - prints! I enjoy hearing your comments on these articles and welcome hearing from you about any new printshops, upcoming workshops, and retreats.

To start the year off, we will look at the work of Dox Thrash (1893-1965), an African-American printmaker originally from Griffin, Georgia, who migrated north as part of the Great Migration. He settled in Chicago and then Philadelphia, producing work on the subject of African-American life. His work is largely recognized as portraying a positive view of African-Americans,promoting the idea of strong characters and bold portraits.

Thrash left home at the age of fifteen in search of work up north as part of the Great Migration (African American). He initially got work with a circus, then he moved to Chicago, and got a job as an elevator operator. He studied art, first through correspondence courses and then at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he completed his studies in 1923. During WWI, Thrash joined the army and fought in the Buffalo Soldiers brigade, where he suffered shell shock, but did not suffer any permanent after affects. In 1925, he settled in Philadelphia and took a job working as a janitor. Once in Philadelphia, he decided to study printmaking at the Graphic Sketch Club, now the Fleisher Art Memorial. In his free time, he continued his art and gained recognition for a poster he designed for the 2nd Annual National Negro Music Festival. He also joined the Tra Club of Philadelphia. He was an important member of Philadelphia’s Fine Print Workshop, a division of the Work Projects Administration’s Federal Arts Project, from 1937-1942, and his career flourished with this support.

Thrash mentored many young African American artists. Forty years after his death, Thrash was posthumously honored in Philadelphia with an exhibition called, “Dox Thrash: An African-American Master Printmaker Rediscovered”.

Thrash' view of the south included old cabins with a nostalgic view of his youth. Families living, working and playing around the homestead. laundry onthe line, the family bound together out of survival and out of necessity to survive as a unit. Some of his work depicted the horrific lynching common in the south prior to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but some also present a solemn, even romantic view of man communing with his environment. These prints have the feel of 19th century French paintings and the works of Corot.

Thrash focused on subjects from the city, memories of his early life in rural Georgia, and nudes and portraits. Narrative, sentiment and African-American experience are the key elements of Thrash’s work; his innovative techniques are important only in so far as they dramatically express his subjects.There are several prints showing scenes of rustic cabins in idyllic landscapes. One print, titled "Sunday Morning", shows a woman dressed up and striding along in profile. (The subject of this print has been theorized as being Thrash’s mother walking to church.)

It was the strength of his African Americans portraits that Thrash emphasized over and over, reflecting his African American audience back at themselves, hinting at the psychological expense of attempting to conform to pre-existing white norms while presenting a new vision of the group as strong, positive role models overcoming their past and adversities.

Thrash's style is soft, dark and evokes passion. His line is classically structural and his tones softly Romantic, but the depth of his passion for his fellow man is evident in every rough, coarsely drawn line. His body of prints, which number over 100, are worth a look and can be seen in Ittmann's book which is listed below.

Thrash working in his studio.

Ittmann, John. Dox Thrash: An African-American Master Printmaker Rediscovered. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art; Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2001.

Chicago's Own Printmaker, Eldzier Cortor

The joy of this blog is when I find some new, or elder, printmaker’s work that I haven’t seen before. We have some mighty fine colleagues out there, and Eldzier Cortor is one of the good ones. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I do. Recently, a major gift of Cortor’s work was given to the Art Institute of Chicago, and anyone can make an appointment go see Cortor’s prints in their fabulous Print & Drawing Room.

Notable for his prints and paintings, African-American artist and printmaker Eldzier Cortor was born in 1916, in Tidewater, VA, to John and Ophelia Cortor. His family was a part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the industrial north at the beginning of the 1900s. His family moved to the south side of Chicago when Cortor was about a year old. He later attended Englewood High School with other notable African-American artists, such as Margaret Burroughs and Charles Wilbert White.

He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, gaining a degree in 1936. While there, he came under the influence of instructor Kathleen Blackshear, who led students to explore the regional arts of Africa and other non-Western cultures at University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, and the Field Museum. Studying the African sculptures at the Field Museum transformed his work. "That was the most important influence in all my work, for to this day you will find in my handling of the human figure that cylindrical and lyrical quality I was taught...to appreciate in African art."

He also studied at the Institute of Design. Cortor, like his peers in the Harlem Renaissance, sought to reclaim his ancestral heritage as a means of informing and empowering his art. He searched for positive Black imagery, which he found in Chicago’s South Side working-class, in the former slave cultures of the U.S. South and Caribbean, and, finally, in the iconic Black female figure.

In 1940 he worked with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), where he drew scenes of Depression-era Bronzeville, a near south side Chicago neighborhood. Cortor received two Rosenwald Foundation grants, in 1944 and 1945, to live with the Gullah people in the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. In 1949, Cortor received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti, and he taught at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince from 1949–1951.

During his career, Cortor produced several prints in the mid-1950s with Japanese printmaker Jun’ichiro Sekino, who was a leading member of the Sosaku Hanga, or Creative Prints, movement. Between 1955 and 1998, he made experimental prints at New York’s famous Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop.

Cortor was one of the first African-American artists to make African-American women his primary theme, saying, "the Black woman represents the Black race, continuance of life." These women have been a central focus of Eldzier Cortor’s work for much of his career; their elongated sculptural features appearing timeless and modern. It was when Cortor lived with the Gullah people that he became fascinated with their deep cultural African ties to their ancestry, and this prompted him to depict Woman as an archetypal image.

Cortor’s work is also influenced by surrealism, "who often uses the female figure in a surreal interior and exterior environment." While much of his work displays a strength and hopefulness, other series, such as his Haitian-influenced slaughterhouse series speak of suffering, oppression and racism. The lasting impression of Cortor’s work shows his pride of his ancestry, and love of the female form. These compositions show off, unabashedly, Cortor’s free expressive color, form and loose compositions; and the female nude as tall, lean powerful and sensual figures. His gift to the Art Institute of Chicago cannot be diminished in importance because he is one of the major figures of Chicago’s African American art scene. We can only hope to see more of his work as he continues to make art, and especially prints.

Exhibitions:
1938 - "An Exhibition in Defense of Peace and Democracy", the Chicago Artists' Group
1940 - "The Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro", in Chicago.
1967 - City College of New York, "The Evolution of Afro-American Artists: 1800 - 1950"
1976 - Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "Two Centuries of Black American Art", (which toured the U.S. in 1977.)
1988 - "Three Masters", Kenkeleba Gallery, NY, (with Hughie Lee-Smith and Archibald Motley)
2002 - "Eldzier Cortor: Master Printmaker", Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, MA
2010 - Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
2010 - Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN
2013 - San Antonio Museum of Art, TX

Collections:
Howard University
The Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Art Institute of Chicago

Awards:
Art Institute of Chicago, Advisory Committee’s Legends and Legacy Award

Publications:
Matthew Backer and Jennifer Heusel, “Black Spirit”: Works on Paper by Eldzier Cortor (Indiana University Art Museum, 2006).

The Incredible Antonio Frasconi

Antonio Frasconi was born in 1919 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but grew up   in Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, Uruguay, by parents of Italian   decent.  As a young boy, by the age of 12 he was already making images. He started out making copies of Mickey Mouse, but soon afterward he learned about printing and he drew political cartoons for newspapers.He was attracted to making multiple image so he could afford to keep his prices reasonable.

 

Frasconi loved Paul Gauguin's colorful work and le was enamored of American jazz music. In 1945, at the end of World War II, he moved to the United States and worked for a short time as a gardener at the Santa Barbara Museum of art. Soon afterward he earned a scholarship to attend the art Student's League in new York City. From there, he went to study at the New School of Research.

"For me, New York City was a place for living and learning the good and the bad," he said. In the early '50s, he met and married fellow artist Leona Pierce, who had also studied at the Art Students' League. The Frasconis left New York City in 1957, moving to the more sedate and peaceful Norwalk, after the birth of their second son, Miguel. Frasconi's sons are also artists: Miguel is a composer and glass harmonica musician, and Pablo, is a filmmaker, whose work includes a 1985 film, called "The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi." 

By the 1950’s, Frasconi was recognized as one of America’s foremost pintmakers. His woodcuts are concerned with social and political issues for a long time. His bold and forceful images addressed the atrocities of the Vietnam and Iraq wars. One of his greatest and most personal projects was a series of prints called Los Desparacidos, or the Disappeared. It was about the thousands of men and women who had been victims of the brutal dictatorships of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. This project further  fueled his interest to pursue making images about social protest and he continued to do so. Sometimes brutal in their clarity or making a quiet but pointed comment on the plight of migrant workers toiling day and night to bring in the crops, Frasconi was not shy when it came to his opinions.

Antonio Frasconi, remained a resident of Norwalk, still printmaking. His studio overlooked one of the beautiful coastal salt marshes in Norwalk, Connecticut, and captured the patterns and colors of the grasses and estuaries, the tidal flats, the waterfowl and flocks of migratory birds, and the sky. 

Frasconi's color combinations are like watching music, they are at times jazzy, vibrant, then muted. Later in his career, he became closely in tune with Nature and its ebb and flow of the tides,  seasonal color changes and nuances of the Norwalk landscape.

As an educator, he taught art at School of Art and Design at SUNY Purchase for 35 years. Frasconi also taught art at the Rowayton Art Center in the 1960s. By then, he was a well- established graphic artist, whose prints were a recognizable visual commentary for contemporary political and social issues.One of Frasconi's former students, Norwalk resident Virginia Bates,  said of his courses, "It was wonderful. It was the most stimulating class I ever took."

For the past 50 years or so, the landscape around Frasconi's home in Norwalk's Village Creek community, have found their place amongst the artist's prints. The print to the right here represents his observations well. Men are quietly going about their business, hoping their efforts will prove fruitful.... As to why he was attracted to woodcuts, Frasconi said it was difficult to answer. His approach to making prints was always by instinct more organic and painterly. The artist said his later work glorifies the landscape, yet he feels the encroachment of development and time changing the natural surroundings to something more suburban.

One understands he means that twofold, where the natural environment is lovely and peaceful, but the mark of man is inescapable. Kirk said that although Frasconi's earlier body of work is known for its political commentary, his most recent works depict more peaceful themes of nature. Filled with beauty and tranquility, the prints convey marshlands and tidal rivers as viewed from his home."They depict the wetlands of South Norwalk, a stone's throw from his studio windows, as they merge into the distance with the waters of Long Island Sound. This scene is always transforming, and the prints on view change with the seasons as the migrating birds fly across these landscapes/seascapes.

Awards and Accolades:

Art Student’s league – 1945

Guggenheim Foundation award – 1952
U.S. postage stamp  - 1963, honoring the centennial of the National Arts and Sciences

Represented Uuguay at the 1968 Venice Biennale
Distinguished teaching Professor of Visual Arts at SUNY, Purchase – 1982

Illustrator and designer of over 100 children’s books

Artwork published in magazines, a and various album covers.
Artwork in cluded in the follwoing public collections:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institute

Carlos Cortez: Crusader for the Oppressed

One of Chicago’s most beloved printmakers, muralist and political activist Carlos Cortez (1923–2005) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of a Mexican Indian Wobbly union organizer father and a German socialist pacifist mother. Starting in 1947, for sixty years, , Cortez was involved with the Industrial Workers of the World,writing articles and drawing cartoons for the union’s newspaper. He identified himself as an anarcho-syndicalist, and was an accomplished artist and a highly influential political artist. After Cortez married in 1965, he and his wife moved to Chicago where he became an integral part of the local Mexican and Chicano mural movement until his death.

Cortez is perhaps best known for his wood and linoleum-cut prints. When linoleum became too expensive, he worked with woodblocks. “There’s a work of art waiting to be liberated inside every chunk of wood. I’m paying homage to the tree that was chopped down by making this piece of wood communicate something.” --- C.Cortez
Inspired by the works of José Guadalupe Posada and Käthe Kollwitz, Carlos combined technical and stylistic influences from German Expressionism and themes from ancient Aztec and modern Chicano sources to make numerous prints about striking workers, miners, farm workers and portraits about labor organizers. More often, his art was about advocating for a position, rather than opposing some situation.  His social sympathies are akin to the  works of French artists Pissaro, Signac, and Millet, but he was often heard to credit Posada as his greatest influence. He also had affinities with the work of Siquieros and Leopoldo Mendez.

For anyone that knew him, Carlos Cortez was a kind soul, a giving person, a generous mentor to upcoming artists, and still is a great inspiration to many artists to this day.  His beliefs came from love and compassion for telling the truth, and celebrating our commonalities. Cortez’ presence is clearly seen amongst the younger Mexican artists in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, and his legacy will continue to influence new generations of artists as long as there is a truth to be told or a cause to uphold. 

I once attended a panel discussion that included Cortez and some notable local artists and art historians. An exhibition of Cortez' prints surrounded the panel discussion. At one point in the discussion, an arrogant art historian (obviously trying to make an inflammatory statement to rile up the crowd) made a derogatory statement about Cortez' life's work for social reform. The audience gasped, and then people started to decry the historian for his lack of respect for Cortez and his work. The trick was in. The historian had deliberately played the 'insult card', but I sat back and watched Mr. Cortez during the audience's ensuing tirade. He was calm, collected, unfazed. He realized what the historian was up to, and wasn't about to lower himself or his work to respond. When it came time for him to speak he quietly, calmly, and with compassion, put the historian and his cheap grand-standing tactic in it's place. The audience cheered. Cortez knew his self-worth and his work would outlast some historian's cheap flashpoint of debate. You see, he knew - as most artists do - that his work will live on, and speak a truth that will be long felt after his passing. No one can take that away or demean its sincerity.

Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art, which holds the largest, most complete collection of Carlos Cortez' work, has exhibited a complete installation of the artist’s living room studio. His work is otherwise found in several museum collections worldwide, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. 

As an artist for the masses, this final statement about keeping his art available for the public is in keeping with his generous nature, and making sure the message of his work stays in the public’s eye.I hope this will inspire other artists to share their work more with their unknown audience, since our messages must remain in the public's eye to be powerful and meaningful. 

“… when you do a graphic, the amount of prints you can make from it is infinite. I made a provision in my estate, for whoever will take care of my blocks, that if any of my graphic works are selling for high prices, immediate copies should be made to keep the price down.”

–Carlos Cortez