Alma Woodsey Thomas
Encyclopedia
Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African American
Expressionist
painter and art educator. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C.
and the Washington Post described her as a force in the Washington Color School
.
, 1894. In 1906 the family moved to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., relocating due to racial violence
in Georgia
and the public school system of Washington. As a child she showed artistic interest, making puppets and sculptures at home. Thomas attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes. After graduating from high school in 1911, she studied kindergarten
education at Miner Normal School until 1913. She served as a substitute teacher in Washington until 1914 when she obtained a permanent teaching position on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
. Two years later in 1916, she started teaching kindergarten at the Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware
, staying there until 1923.
Thomas entered Howard University
in 1921 as a home economics
student, only to switch to fine art
after studying under art department founder James V. Herring
. She earned her B.S. in Fine Arts in 1924 from Howard, becoming the first graduate from the university fine art program. That year Thomas began teaching at Shaw Junior High School, where she taught until her retirement in 1960. While at Shaw Junior High, she started a community arts program that encouraged student appreciation of fine art. The program supported marionette
performances and the distribution of student designed holiday cards which were given to soldiers at the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center
. In 1934 she earned her Masters
in Art Education
from Columbia University
and studied painting at American University
under Jacob Kainen
from 1950 to 1960. In 1958 she visited art centers in Western Europe
on behalf of the Tyler School of Art
. She retired in 1960 from teaching and dedicated herself to painting. Alma Thomas died, living in the same house that her family moved into upon their arrival in Washington in 1906, on February 28, 1978.
Alma Thomas' early work was representational in manner, and then and upon classes at Howard and training under James V. Herring and Lois Mailou Jones
her work became more abstract
. Thomas would not be recognized as a professional artist until her retirement from teaching in 1960, when she enrolled in classes at American University. There she learned about the Color Field
movement and theory from Joe Summerford and Jacob Kainen
and became interested in the use of color and composition
. Within twelve years after her first class at American she began creating Color Field paintings, inspired by the work of the New York School
and Abstract Expressionism
. She worked out of the kitchen
in her house, creating works like Watusi (Hard Edge) (1963), a manipulation of the Matisse cutout The Snail, in which Thomas shifted shapes around and changed the colors that Matisse used, and named it after a Chubby Checker
song.
Her first retrospective exhibit was in 1966 at the Gallery of Art at Howard University, curated by art historian James A. Porter. For this exhibition she created Earth Paintings, a series of nature inspired abstract works, including Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto (1973) which art historian Sharon Patton considers "one of the most Minimalist Color-Field paintings ever produced by an African-American artist." These paintings have been compared to Byzantine
mosaic
s and the pointillist
paintings of Georges-Pierre Seurat
. A friend of Delilah Pierce, Thomas and Pierce would drive into the countryside where Thomas would seek inspiration, pulling ideas from the effects of light
and atmosphere on rural
environments. Thomas was, in 1972, the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
, and within the same year an exhibition was also held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art
.
, White House
interior designer Michael Smith and White House curator
William Allman to be exhibited during the Obama presidency. Watusi (Hard Edge) was eventually removed from the White House due to concerns with the piece fitting into the space in Michelle Obama's East Wing office. Sky Light, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
, hangs in the Obama family private quarters. The choice of Thomas for the White House collection was described as an ideal symbol
for the Obama administration by New York Times art critic
Holland Cotter. Cotter described Thomas' work as "forward-looking without being radical; post-racial but also race-conscious." Thomas' papers were donated in several periods between 1979 and 2004 to the Archives of American Art
by J. Maurice Thomas, Alma Thomas' sister.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
painter and art educator. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and the Washington Post described her as a force in the Washington Color School
Washington Color School
A visual-art movement of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, the Washington Color School was originally a group of painters who showed works in the "Washington Color Painters" exhibit at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, DC from June 25-September 5, 1965. The exhibition...
.
Personal life and education
Alma Thomas was born the eldest of four children to John Harris Thomas, a businessman, and Amelia Cantey Thomas, a dress designer, in Columbus, GeorgiaColumbus, Georgia
Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Muscogee County, Georgia, United States, with which it is consolidated. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 189,885. It is the principal city of the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, which, in 2009, had an estimated population of 292,795...
, 1894. In 1906 the family moved to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., relocating due to racial violence
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
in Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
and the public school system of Washington. As a child she showed artistic interest, making puppets and sculptures at home. Thomas attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes. After graduating from high school in 1911, she studied kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...
education at Miner Normal School until 1913. She served as a substitute teacher in Washington until 1914 when she obtained a permanent teaching position on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
Eastern Shore of Maryland
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a territorial part of the U.S. state of Maryland that lies predominately on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay and consists of nine counties. The origin of term Eastern Shore was derived to distinguish a territorial part of the State of Maryland from the Western...
. Two years later in 1916, she started teaching kindergarten at the Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...
, staying there until 1923.
Thomas entered Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
in 1921 as a home economics
Home Economics
Home economics is the profession and field of study that deals with the economics and management of the home and community...
student, only to switch to fine art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
after studying under art department founder James V. Herring
James V. Herring
James Vernon Herring was an African American artist and professor of art at Howard University.James V. Herring founded the Howard University Department of Art in 1922. In 1943 along with Alonzo J. Aden he opened the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington DC.* Biography...
. She earned her B.S. in Fine Arts in 1924 from Howard, becoming the first graduate from the university fine art program. That year Thomas began teaching at Shaw Junior High School, where she taught until her retirement in 1960. While at Shaw Junior High, she started a community arts program that encouraged student appreciation of fine art. The program supported marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
performances and the distribution of student designed holiday cards which were given to soldiers at the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center
Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center
The Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center began in 1923 as an old soldiers' home originally called the Tuskegee Home, part of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers system. The home-hospital, eventually 27 buildings, was created next to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial...
. In 1934 she earned her Masters
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in Art Education
Art education
Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings...
from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and studied painting at American University
American University
American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...
under Jacob Kainen
Jacob Kainen
Jacob Kainen was an American painter and printmaker. He is also known as an art historian, writingbooks on John Baptist Jackson and the etchings of Canaletto...
from 1950 to 1960. In 1958 she visited art centers in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
on behalf of the Tyler School of Art
Tyler School of Art
The Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, usually just referred to as Tyler School of Art is Temple University's school of art, which confers BFA and MFA degrees. The school was originally founded by sculptors Stella Elkins Tyler and Boris Blai on a separate 14-acre estate in Elkins Park...
. She retired in 1960 from teaching and dedicated herself to painting. Alma Thomas died, living in the same house that her family moved into upon their arrival in Washington in 1906, on February 28, 1978.
Artistic career
"Creative art is for all time and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged."
-Alma Thomas, 1970
Alma Thomas' early work was representational in manner, and then and upon classes at Howard and training under James V. Herring and Lois Mailou Jones
Lois Mailou Jones
Lois Mailou Jones was a artist who lived into her nineties and who painted and influenced others during the Harlem Renaissance and beyond during her long teaching career. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is buried on her beloved Martha's Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery.-Life:Dr...
her work became more abstract
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
. Thomas would not be recognized as a professional artist until her retirement from teaching in 1960, when she enrolled in classes at American University. There she learned about the Color Field
Color Field
Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...
movement and theory from Joe Summerford and Jacob Kainen
Jacob Kainen
Jacob Kainen was an American painter and printmaker. He is also known as an art historian, writingbooks on John Baptist Jackson and the etchings of Canaletto...
and became interested in the use of color and composition
Composition (visual arts)
In the visual arts – in particular painting, graphic design, photography and sculpture – composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art or a photograph, as distinct from the subject of a work...
. Within twelve years after her first class at American she began creating Color Field paintings, inspired by the work of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
and Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
. She worked out of the kitchen
Kitchen
A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation.In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets arranged according to a modular design. Many households have a...
in her house, creating works like Watusi (Hard Edge) (1963), a manipulation of the Matisse cutout The Snail, in which Thomas shifted shapes around and changed the colors that Matisse used, and named it after a Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker is an American singer-songwriter. He is widely known for popularizing the twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard's R&B hit "The Twist"...
song.
Her first retrospective exhibit was in 1966 at the Gallery of Art at Howard University, curated by art historian James A. Porter. For this exhibition she created Earth Paintings, a series of nature inspired abstract works, including Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto (1973) which art historian Sharon Patton considers "one of the most Minimalist Color-Field paintings ever produced by an African-American artist." These paintings have been compared to Byzantine
Byzantine art
Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....
mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
s and the pointillist
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
paintings of Georges-Pierre Seurat
Georges-Pierre Seurat
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism...
. A friend of Delilah Pierce, Thomas and Pierce would drive into the countryside where Thomas would seek inspiration, pulling ideas from the effects of light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
and atmosphere on rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
environments. Thomas was, in 1972, the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, and within the same year an exhibition was also held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
.
Legacy
In 2009 two paintings, including Watusi (Hard Edge), by Alma Thomas were chosen by First Lady Michelle ObamaMichelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States...
, White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
interior designer Michael Smith and White House curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
William Allman to be exhibited during the Obama presidency. Watusi (Hard Edge) was eventually removed from the White House due to concerns with the piece fitting into the space in Michelle Obama's East Wing office. Sky Light, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, hangs in the Obama family private quarters. The choice of Thomas for the White House collection was described as an ideal symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
for the Obama administration by New York Times art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
Holland Cotter. Cotter described Thomas' work as "forward-looking without being radical; post-racial but also race-conscious." Thomas' papers were donated in several periods between 1979 and 2004 to the Archives of American Art
Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C...
by J. Maurice Thomas, Alma Thomas' sister.
Notable exhibitions
- A Proud Continuum: Eight Decades of Art at Howard University, 2005, Howard University
- Color Balance: Paintings by Felrath Hines and Alma Thomas, 2010, Nasher Museum of ArtNasher Museum of ArtThe Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and opened on October 2, 2005...
Notable collections
- Air View of a Spring Nursery, 1966; Columbus Museum
- Breeze Rustling Through Fall Flowers, 1968; Phillips CollectionPhillips CollectionThe Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H...
- Iris, Tulips, Jonquils and Crocuses, 1969; National Museum of Women in the ArtsNational Museum of Women in the ArtsThe National Museum of Women in the Arts , located in Washington, D.C. is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay...
Further reading
- Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective of the Paintings. Fort Wayne: Fort Wayne Museum of Art (1998). ISBN 0764906860