Black History Month: Woodruff, Lewis, Jennings

My celebration of Black History Month continues with three more artists who are very important in the history of art—Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Wilmer Jennings. They represent the divergent views that existed among African American artists from the Harlem Renaissance through the 1960s about what African Americans should depict in their art. Some believed that Black artists should represent scenes of the Black experience. Others advocated for exploring their own visions so African American artists could be competitive in the ever-changing fabric of modern art, regardless of the “Blackness” of the art. The dichotomy has proven how important the art of African Americans has been, and remains to this day, in the evolution of American art history.

Hale Woodruff (1900–1980, United States), Celestial Gates. Oil on canvas, 60" x 46" (152.4 x 116.8 cm). Collection of Spelman College Museum of Art. Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from the exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976). © 2025 Estate of Hale Woodruff / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (8S-21891wdvg)

While the debate about what exactly African American artists should represent (scenes from African American life or abstraction) went on, Woodruff initiated a series of paintings and prints entitled Celestial Gate in 1946. He combined layers of gestural passages of paint influenced by Abstract Expressionism with symbols from African art so his work would have mass appeal. In this version of Celestial Gate, Woodruff incorporates forms derived from Asante gold weights from Ghana, as well as symbols from the decoratively carved granary doors of the Dogon culture in Mali.

Born in Illinois, Woodruff moved to Nashville, Tennessee, with his widowed mother at a young age. He began drawing at as a child and attended the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1919. There, he trained in the American Impressionist style of fluid brushwork, brilliant color, and quick execution.

After winning a Harmon Foundation Award in 1926, Woodruff moved to Paris for four years. There he met Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937), whose style reflected the high-value Impressionist palette. He also learned of Cubism and Expressionism, combining the two styles into quasi-abstract compositions. On his return to the United States in 1931, Woodruff was hired at Atlanta University, becoming the first Black professor at a southern university. After Atlanta University, he went on to teach at New York University from 1946 to 1970. Throughout his life, Woodruff was a tireless advocate for the art education of African Americans.

Woodruff gradually came to feel that Black artists should create paintings that reflected their surroundings, African heritage, and experiences. However, he openly advised students to embrace more contemporary techniques, such as broken color, expressive brushstroke, and gestural line. His most pivotal works up to World War II (1939–1945) were a series of murals depicting the historic Amistad slave trials. By the 1950s, Woodruff had once again embraced abstraction, impacted by the slashing color and decorative surfaces of Abstract Expressionism. In 1965, he was one of the founding members of Spiral, the African American artists’ alliance.

Norman Lewis (1909–1979, United States), Composition, 1952. Oil on canvas, 38” x 52" (96.5 x 132.1 cm). Private Collection. Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from the exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976). © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist. (8S-21916)

One of the main points of discussion for Spiral artists was whether Black artists should stick with conventional realism in order to document the African American experience, or pursue abstraction as a way of showing the valuable contributions of Black artists in defining contemporary American art. Since the mid-1940s, Lewis created abstractions that often flirted with objective forms. Although nominally a nonobjective work, Composition could easily be interpreted as a misty forest scene. Lewis combined the geometric organization of Cubism with the free abstraction and lyrical brushwork of Abstract Expressionism. 

Born in Harlem, New York City, Lewis was one of the few native New Yorkers who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. He was the only African American artist who is associated with the pioneer American modernist movement, Abstract Expressionism. At the time he was born, Harlem was primarily an Italian American and Jewish community, although that would change after the Great Migration (ca. 1910–1970). This acquainted Lewis with racial inequality at an early age. He recognized that he wanted to be an artist at the age of nine.

After serving on a Merchant Marine freighter, and inspired by the New Negro Movement in Harlem, Lewis enthusiastically embraced African art. He studied African art in museums, particularly the 1935 exhibition of African art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. At MoMA, he studied European modernists like Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), and Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944). Studying art at the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts from 1933 to 1935, while also taking classes at Columbia University, Lewis was mentored by modernist African American sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962). From 1936 to 1943, Lewis painted murals that honed a personal social realist style for the Federal Art Project.

In the mid-1940s, Lewis turned to abstraction, influenced by his association with artists from the New York School (Abstract Expressionism), including color field painter Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967). Lewis’s work was included in the landmark 1951 exhibition of Abstract Expressionist artists, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, at the Museum of Modern Art. While part of this elite group of American modernists, Lewis was still deeply connected to the arts and people of Harlem. As a founding member of Spiral, Lewis confirmed his path with abstraction as a way to demonstrate the importance of Black artists to modernism in American art.

Along with Romare Bearden (1911–1988), Lewis helped found the Cinque Gallery in New York in 1971. It was dedicated to showing the work of struggling minority artists. As a painter who worked in abstraction while it was in its infancy in the United States, Lewis is emblematic of the important contribution of Black Americans to the development of modernism in American art.

Wilmer Jennings (1910–1990, United States), De Good Book Says, ca. 1935. Linoleum cut on paper, 10" x 8" (25.4 x 20.3 cm). Fisk University Museum, Nashville, Tennessee. Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from the exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976). © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist. (8S-21919)

While working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Jennings became interested in producing prints that depicted the struggles and lives of African Americans. De Good Book Says, based on a 1935 painting of the same subject, depicts the importance of religion in the African American community. Jennings, however, chose to use exaggerated form, sharp angles, and distorted figures to express the passion of the Black church. The exaggerated figures recall the work of Woodruff, as well as the Expressionist relief prints of the German Expressionists. Jennings had learned about German Expressionism from Woodruff.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Jennings attended Moorehouse College in Atlanta. There, he became acquainted with Woodruff, who encouraged him to study European modernism and incorporate it into themes about African American life. Jennings and Woodruff painted two murals together in Atlanta (later destroyed).

After graduating from Moorehouse, Jennings moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In 1935, he became involved with the WPA’s Federal Art Project. There he gained valuable experience with printmaking techniques. He was particularly drawn to the relief processes of linoleum cut and wood engraving.