Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas is recognized as the best well known painter of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Kansas, received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Kansas, and taught in Kansas City high schools for two years. In 1924 Aaron Douglas came to Harlem where he met the German artist Winold Reiss, a white artist, who encouraged young black artists to look at African art for its elements of design. Douglas explored African art in his painting, which brought him into contact with Alain Locke and W.E.B. DuBois. Locke and DuBois, both committed to the exploration of African aesthetics, gave Aaron Douglas numerous opportunities to further his career in art.

Douglas illustrations were often found in The Crisis magazine, as well as in numerous other publications such as: Opportunity, Theater Arts Monthly and Vanity Fair. Alain Locke used Douglas illustrations between the chapters of his famous anthology of black writers, The New Negro, in 1925. Locke who wanted a Negro School of Art in Harlem called Douglas a pioneering Africanist.

His fame and reputation spread to Nashville (Fisk University) and Chicago where Douglas painted historical murals and paintings that related pride in black history. Douglas created a series of paintings for James Weldon Johnson's book of poetry: God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. Each of his paintings was done in a flat, hard-edge style that used themes from Negro spirituals, the Bible and African and black American customs. Rectangles, squares, triangles and circles were the dominant shapes he used in his paintings, as they are found in African art and Cubism of European artists. All of Douglas' paintings utilize the black American figure almost as a silhouetted form which can be seen in the mural he painted for the 135th Street branch of The New York Public Library (Schomburg Center). The mural is known as Aspects of Negro Life.

Aaron Douglas joined the faculty of Fisk University in the late 1930's where he stayed until his death in 1979. Aaron Douglas is remembered most for having been the leader in the use of African inspired themes during the Harlem Renaissance.⁸