Augusta Savage

• Born: February 29, 1892
• Birthplace: Green Cove Springs, Florida
• Died: March 26, 1962
• Place of death: Bronx, New York

Sculptor and educator

Savage taught and nurtured African American children and adults in the visual arts, helping to produce several well-known black artists. Her sculptures were humane and compassionate representations of African Americans at a time when they were considered less than human.

Areas of achievement: Art and photography; Education

Early Life

Augusta Savage was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida, on February 29, 1892, to Cornelia and Edward Fells. Cornelia worked as a laundress, and Edward worked as a carpenter, fisherman, and farmer. The seventh of fourteen children, Savage began her sculpting career as a child, creating figures out of clay mud in Green Cove Springs. At the age of fifteen, Savage married John T. Moore. In 1908, they had a daughter named Connie. A few years after Connie’s birth, Moore died.

In 1915, Fells’s father received a position at a church in West Palm Beach, and the family moved there. In addition to the move, Savage experienced two other life-changing events: She began teaching and remarried. Although she was still a student, she was hired to teach clay modeling at her school. That year, Savage also married her second husband, James Savage. They divorced sometime before 1923.

After receiving permission from the school superintendent, George Graham Currie, Savage exhibited her clay sculptures at the Palm Beach County Fair in 1915. She won a twenty-five-dollar prize and an honor ribbon for her statues, most of which were of farm animals. In light of this local recognition, Currie encouraged Savage to study sculpture in New York.

Before going to New York, Savage attended Tallahassee State Normal School (now known as Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University) in Tallahassee, Florida, from 1919 to 1920. In 1920, Savage left school to focus on sculpting. She moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where she hoped to make portrait busts of wealthy African Americans. Four months later, failing to get commissions, Savage headed to New York City.

Savage moved to New York City in 1921 and settled in Harlem, where she met the head of Cooper Union, Kate L. Reynolds. Upon examining Savage’s portfolio, Reynolds admitted the young sculptor ahead of prospective students on the waiting list. Although she had to leave temporarily because of financial difficulties, Savage completed four years’ worth of studies in three years. Cooper Union awarded Savage its first working scholarship, which helped to offset her living expenses. She graduated in 1923 and received a scholarship to attend the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in France, but the award was rescinded when the two other recipients, who were white, refused to travel with Savage.

Life’s Work

During the 1920’s, Savage exhibited her sculpture and received support from important figures in the development of African American history and culture, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Julius Rosenwald, whom actively supported black artists. Du Bois encouraged Savage to travel to Paris to study her art and provided her letters of introduction to other African American artists working in Paris: Henry O. Tanner, Elizabeth Prophet, and Countée Cullen.

In September, 1929, Savage arrived in Paris. There, her artistic style developed as she worked with several respected sculptors. While she had previously produced mostly portrait busts, she expanded her portfolio to include full-bodied figures and genre subjects. After two years in Paris, Savage returned to New York.

Savage’s greatest contributions to African American art, history, and culture were in her roles as an educator and arts administrator. In 1932, she established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, where she taught art to children and adults. A year later, Savage expanded her art education offerings and founded the Harlem Art Workshop, in collaboration with artists Georgette Seabrooke-Powell and Charles Alston, and Mary Beattie Brady, director of the Harmon Foundation. The Harlem Art Workshop offered free art education and was affiliated with the State University of New York. Additionally, Savage worked as an assistant director for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. She was the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center, which counted African American artists Jacob Lawrence, Ernest Crichlow, and Norman Lewis among its students. In Savage’s roles as educator and administrator, she shaped and cultivated the Harlem art community as well as future renowned African American artists.

At the end of the 1930’s, Savage created her most significant sculpture, Lift Every Voice and Sing (1937-1939), also known as The Harp. Inspired by the spiritual of the same title by James Weldon Johnson, Savage made the sculpture for the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The sculpture depicted a harp, with a choir as the strings and an outstretched arm as the base. It stood sixteen feet tall and was the highlight of the fair, winning a silver medal. The fair sold replicas of the sculpture as souvenirs. Despite its acclaim, however, because of a lack of money for storage and shipping, the sculpture was destroyed.

Savage dedicated so much time to the World’s Fair and creating Lift Every Voice and Sing that she lost her job as director of the Harlem Community Art Center. Job opportunities in the arts diminished in the 1940’s with the start of World War II. Savage did not create or exhibit very much after the 1930’s because she did not have financial support or patronage; however, she continued to teach. She moved to Saugerties, New York, where she continued teaching art at local summer camps. When her health began declining, Savage moved back to New York City, living in the Bronx. She died on March 26, 1962, at the age of seventy.

Significance

Savage’s contributions to American culture reside in her steadfast commitment to providing an avenue for African Americans to obtain art education. Although her focus on education and providing opportunities to African American artists limited her own artistic output, Savage was notable as one of only a few African American female sculptors during her lifetime.

Bibliography

Farrington, Lisa. Creating Their Own Image: The History of African American Women Artists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Discusses Savage’s sculpture and influence in the Harlem arts community.

Leininger-Miller, Theresa. “’Une Femme Sculpteur Noire’: Augusta Savage in Paris, 1929-1931.” In New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Describes Savage’s study in Paris and its impact on her life and work.

Patton, Sharon. African American Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A history of African American art that includes a broad interpretation of Savage and her sculpture.