Aaron Douglas
Aaron Douglas, born on May 26, 1899, in Topeka, Kansas, was a prominent African American artist, educator, and activist, closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. From an early age, he showed artistic talent, influenced by his mother’s paintings. After graduating from high school, he faced racial discrimination while seeking employment, which led him to pursue formal art education at the University of Nebraska, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1922. Douglas moved to Harlem in 1925, where he interacted with key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, who inspired him to create art that reflected the African American experience.
He became known for his murals and illustrations that challenged stereotypes and celebrated African culture. His notable works include the mural series "Aspects of Negro Life" at the New York Public Library, depicting the African American journey from Africa to the 1930s. Throughout his career, Douglas was also committed to activism, serving as the president of the Harlem Artists' Guild and advocating for equitable funding for African American artists. He later became a professor and chair of the Art Department at Fisk University, where he instilled cultural pride in his students. Douglas' innovative contributions and dedication to education profoundly impacted the representation and appreciation of African American art and culture. He passed away on February 2, 1979, in Nashville, Tennessee, leaving behind a legacy of artistic and cultural significance.
Subject Terms
Aaron Douglas
- Born: May 26, 1899
- Birthplace: Topeka, Kansas
- Died: February 3, 1979
- Place of death: Nashville, Tennessee
Artist, designer, and educator
Douglas used an innovative painting style, combining African and modern art concepts, to depict African American achievements and experiences. He enjoyed success as an artist and designer during the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to his artistic career, Douglas played a major role in developing Fisk University’s Art Department.
Areas of achievement: Art and photography; Education
Early Life
Aaron Douglas was born on May 26, 1899, in Topeka, Kansas, to Aaron Douglas, Sr., a laborer, and Elizabeth Douglas, a homemaker. Douglas attended segregated schools until he enrolled at Topeka High School. As a child, he was fascinated by his mother’s paintings. When he was in high school, his talent as an artist became apparent.
After graduation in the spring of 1917, Douglas traveled north in hopes of finding work. He worked in Detroit, Michigan, and later in Dunkirk, New York, where he was confronted with racial discrimination. Like many African Americans in search of jobs in the early twentieth century, Douglas was offered only unskilled and low-paying work. By late 1917, he had saved enough money to enroll in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska, from which he graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1922. Douglas accepted a position as an art teacher at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1923.
In 1925, he left Kansas City for Harlem, where he met many key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Alain Locke and W. E. B. Du Bois, who encouraged Douglas to create art that depicted the experiences and achievements of African Americans. While in Harlem, Douglas studied with the German artist Winold Reiss, who admired the influence African art had on modernism. Reiss encouraged Douglas to study African art as a source of inspiration.
Life’s Work
Douglas quickly gained a reputation in Harlem as a talented young artist. He designed numerous covers and illustrations for publications such as Opportunity, the National Urban League’s journal, and The Crisis, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Douglas also did illustrations and cover designs for books by African American writers and scholars, such as Du Bois, Locke, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Charles S. Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson.
Douglas also was commissioned to paint murals. His first mural, for Fisk University’s Cravath Memorial Library, was completed in 1930. He created other murals for Chicago’s Sherman Hotel, the Harlem Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936. In 1934, Douglas received a commission to paint a series of murals for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library. He created Aspects of Negro Life, a four-panel mural that represented the African American experience from Africa, enslavement, and Reconstruction to the 1930’s. Douglas’s murals challenged negative stereotypes by presenting African and African American cultural achievements.
Douglas was civically and politically active throughout his life. In 1926, Douglas and other prominent Harlem figures attempted to launch FIRE!!, a journal devoted to young African American artists. The group released only one issue. In 1935, Douglas was elected the president of the Harlem Artists’ Guild, which aimed to ensure fair distribution of Works Progress Administration funds to African American artists.
Douglas accepted a part-time teaching position at Fisk University in 1940 while he worked toward his master’s degree at the Teacher’s College at Columbia University. He received his master’s in 1944 and began teaching at Fisk full time. Douglas later became the Art Department chair, a position he held until his retirement in 1966. While at Fisk, Douglas championed African and African American art and instilled cultural pride in his students.
From 1933 through the 1970’s, Douglas exhibited his work across the country, with many shows in New York City. In 1973, Fisk University awarded him an honorary doctorate. Douglas died February 2, 1979, at the age of seventy-nine, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Significance
Douglas played a pivotal role in the Harlem Renaissance as an artist, illustrator, and activist. His innovative work combined African motifs with modern art and served to educate viewers about African American experiences and achievements. His works also expressed pride in African Americans’ cultural heritage. As an educator, Douglas conveyed that cultural pride to his students, many of whom have carried on his message and his medium.
Bibliography
Bernier, Celeste-Marie. African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. A survey of African American art that devotes significant attention to Douglas and his art during the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Davis, Donald F. “Aaron Douglas of Fisk: Molder of Black Artists.” Journal of Negro History 69, no. 2 (Spring, 1984): 95-99. A look at Douglas’s life and work that focuses on his role at Fisk University.
Earle, Susan, ed. Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. Published to accompany an exhibition of Douglas’s paintings, this book includes many essays on his life and art. Illustrations; chronology.
Kirschke, Amy Helene. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. The first detailed examination of Douglas’s life and work, and the authoritative source.