Hale Woodruff

Woodruff was born in Cairo, Illinois, on August 26, 1900.{{cite web |title=Hale Woodruff |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hale-Woodruff |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date= March 14, 2020 |language=en}} He grew up in a black family in Nashville, Tennessee,{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/wakeupoursouls00tony|title=Wake up our souls : a celebration of Black American artists|last=Tonya|first=Bolden|date=2004|publisher=H.N. Abrams|isbn=0810945274|location=New York|oclc=53020236}} where he attended the local segregated schools. He studied at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Harvard Fogg Art Museum.

Woodruff won an award from the Harmon Foundation in 1926,African-American Artists, 1929–1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art which enabled him to spend four "crucial years studying in Paris from 1927–31."Smith, Roberta, [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/arts/design/hale-woodruffs-talladega-murals-in-rising-up-at-nyu.html?hpw "In Electric Moments, History Transfigured - Hale Woodruff’s Talladega Murals, in 'Rising Up,' at N.Y.U."], The New York Times, August 13, 2013. He studied at the Académie Scandinave and the Académie Moderne.{{cite journal |title=New Oils by Hale Woodruff at Bertha Schaefer's |journal=Bertha Schaeffer Gallery |date=October 25 – November 13, 1954}} He learned in the city's museums as well, while getting to know other expatriates, including Henry Ossawa Tanner, the leading African-American artist. Woodruff met leading figures of the French avant-garde and began collecting African art, which was a source of inspiration for many other modernists, including Pablo Picasso.[http://www.high.org/Art/Exhibitions/Rising-Up-Hale-Woodruff.aspx Hale Woodruff: Rising Up], High Art Museum

He returned to the U.S. in 1931 and married Theresa Ada Baker that year. They had one son, Roy.{{cite web|url = https://aaregistry.org/story/five-decades-of-greatness-in-art-hale-woodruff/ | title = Five Decades of Greatness in Art, Hale Woodruff | publisher = African American Registry|access-date=January 15, 2022}}

Woodruff reluctantly returned to the U.S. due to financial strains from the Great Depression. He worked as an art teacher to support himself.{{cite news |last1=Fraser |first1=Gerald |title=Hale Woodruff Looks Back on Lifetime of Painting |work=The New York Times |date=May 6, 1979}} In 1931 he began teaching art at Atlanta University, a historically black college, eventually developing a department of which he was chair and the core of the University's art collection.{{Cite web|url=https://www.cau.edu/art-museum/about-us.html|title=Clark Atlanta Art Museum, History of the Collection}} He taught classes at the university's Laboratory High School, as well as for students at Morehouse and Spelman, a related college for black women. He founded the annual competition, Atlanta University Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists, which featured many African-American artists. This was conducted from 1942 to 1970.{{cite book |last1=Amaki |first1=Amalia |title=Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, and the Academy |date=c. 2007 |publisher=Atlanta: Spelman College Museum of Fine Art Seattle: University of Washington Press |pages=13–14}}

In 1936 Woodruff went to Mexico to study as an apprentice under the famed muralist Diego Rivera, learning his fresco technique and becoming interested in portrayal of figures. He returned to Atlanta and continued teaching. He began traveling to Talladega College in Alabama to teach and work on a commission for a series of murals.

After his return to the United States in 1936, Woodruff applied his understanding of Post-Impressionism and Cubism to painting and printmaking for social advocacy. Woodruff was inspired by the racism and poverty African Americans in the South faced during the Great Depression.{{Cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/491529|title=Hale Woodruff {{!}} Going Home {{!}} The Met|website=www.metmuseum.org|access-date=February 14, 2020}}File:Mutiny on the Amistad by Hale Woodruff, 1938.jpg

In the spring of 1938, Woodruff was commissioned to work on a series of murals for the lobby of the Savery Library at Talledega College in Alabama.{{Cite journal |last=McDaniel |first=M. Akua |date=1995 |title=Reexamining Hale Woodruff's Talladega College and Atlanta University Murals |journal=The International Review of African American Art |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=4–17 |issn=1045-0920 |via=Art & Architecture Source}}

The first of these murals, which consisted of three panels on the west wall of the lobby, commemorates a revolt by Mende slaves which took place on the Spanish slave ship La Amistad. The first panel, entitled The Mutiny Aboard the Amistad, 1839, depicts the melee as the slaves seize control of the ship. The second panel, The Amistad Slaves on Trial at New Haven, Connecticut, 1840, shows the ensuing United Supreme Court Case, United States v. The Amistad. In the third panel, The Return to Africa, 1842, we see the former slaves' later repatriation to Mendiland.{{Cite book |last=Woodruff |first=Hale |title=Hale Woodruff: 50 Year Of His Art |publisher=Studio Museum of Harlem |year=1979 |pages=67 |language=en-us}}

The murals are an example of Woodruff's mastery of composition. For example, in the first panel:

The power of the combat is accentuated by the figure groups which give the composition its balance and visual stability. The circular motion of the bodies increases the drama of the struggle...The figures are designed in an overlay fashion so that they are seen as one complete unit moving from the left bringing the eye around to the escaping sailor, who reappears in the second panel as the accuser.

Woodruff painted two other surviving murals, though these were not frescoes but oil on canvas of monumental size. The Negro in California History--Settlement and Development (1949), was one of two panels commissioned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles; the other panel was created by Charles Alston. Woodruff also completed six panels around 1950-1951 called Art of the Negro, now at the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries.Dunkley, Tina. [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/hale-woodruff-1900-1980 "Hale Woodruff 1900-1980"], New Georgia Encyclopedia, December 6, 2013. Web. 28 May 2015. For images of and commentary on the "Art of the Negro" murals, see [https://www.cau.edu/art-museum/art-of-the-negro-murals.html Clark Atlanta University Art Museum: The Murals.]

In 1942, even with World War II raging, Woodruff initiated the Atlanta University Art Annuals, an exhibit and competition that was conducted until 1970. These 29 national art exhibitions were a key venue for black artists.

In 1946, Woodruff joined the faculty at New York University in Manhattan. He taught there for more than 20 years before retiring in 1968. Malkia Roberts was among his many New York students.{{cite web|url=http://www.swanngalleries.com/3dcat/2359-1of2/files/assets/basic-html/page52.html|title=The Richard A. Long Collection of African-American Art – Sale 2359, Part I |date=October 9, 2014|publisher=Swann Galleries |access-date= February 3, 2017}}

During the 1950s Woodruff had three solo exhibition at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery.{{cite web |title=Hale Woodruff (1900 – 1980) Dragon. |url=https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/hale-woodruff-1900-1980-dragon-47-c-11745d5b31# |access-date=March 14, 2020 |website=Invaluable |language=en}}

Woodruff died in New York City on September 6, 1980.

File:"The Banjo Player" - NARA - 559155.jpg, painter of The Banjo Lesson (another work which showed African Americans playing the banjo with dignity).]]

Source:{{cite book |last1=Wardlaw|first1=Alvia |title=Black Art: Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art|date=c. 1990 |publisher=Harry N. Abrams Inc|edition= First (March 1, 1990)}}

1976

• Ancestral Memory

the Studio Museum in Harlem

Source:

1985

• Hidden Heritage, Bellevue Art Museum and Art Association of America

1976

• Two Centuries of Black Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

1971

• Newark Museum

1967

• New York University
• San Diego Art Museum
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• City College of New York

1958

• New Bertha Schaffer Gallery, New York

1955

• University of North Carolina

1951

• Atlanta University

In 2012 the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia organized an exhibition of Woodruff's murals created for Talladega College. The exhibition of six of the restored murals toured the United States including the African American Museum (Dallas), the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Chicago Cultural Center, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.{{cite web |title=Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals at Talladega College |url=https://high.org/exhibition/rising-up/ |website=High Museum of Art |access-date=14 March 2020 |archive-date=1 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801112137/https://high.org/exhibition/rising-up/ |url-status=dead }}{{cite web |title=With Powerful Murals, Hale Woodruff Paved The Way For African-American Artists |url=https://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/459251265/with-powerful-murals-hale-woodruff-paved-the-way-for-african-american-artists |website=Weekend Edition Saturday|publisher=National Public Radio |first=C.J.|last=Janovy|date=December 19, 2015|access-date=March 14, 2020 |language=en}}

{{reflist}}

• David C Driskell; Leonard Simon; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/2318292&referer=brief_results Two Centuries of Black American Art], (Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House, 1976) {{ISBN|0-87587-070-8}}, {{ISBN|978-0-87587-070-0}}
• [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/17813325&referer=brief_results Hale Woodruff 50 Years of His Art,] (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1979) {{OCLC|17813325}}
• Samella Lewis, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/29255724&referer=brief_results African American Art and Artists,] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) {{ISBN|0-520-08788-7}}, {{ISBN|978-0-520-08788-0}}, {{ISBN|978-0-520-08532-9}}
• Kenkeleba Gallery (New York, N.Y.), [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/30743648&referer=one_hit The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945–1975], (New York: Kenkeleba House, ©1991) {{OCLC|30743648}}
• Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50253062&tab=holdings American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s: An Illustrated Survey,] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929125405/http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50253062%26tab%3Dholdings |date=2007-09-29 }} (New York School Press, 2003.) {{ISBN|0-9677994-1-4}}. pp. 358–361
• Crystal Britton, African American Art: The Long Struggle, (New Line Books, 1998)
• Samella Lewis, African American Art and Artists, (University of California Press, 1994)
• Sharon Patton, African-American Art, (Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Romare Bearden, A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, (Pantheon, 1993)

{{archival records|title=Hale Woodruff collection}}

• [https://museum.talladega.edu/amistad-murals "Amistad Murals"], Talladega College

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Category:1900 births

Category:1980 deaths

Category:Artists from Indiana

Category:Herron School of Art and Design alumni

Category:African-American painters

Category:African-American printmakers

Category:20th-century American printmakers

Category:20th-century African-American artists