Hale Woodruff
Hale Woodruff
1900 - 1980
American painter, printmaker, and teacher. He was a leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance (see AFRICAN AMERICAN ART, §2) and studied at the John Herron Institute, Indianapolis, the school of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and the Académie Scandinave and the Académie Moderne, Paris. He also worked with Henry Ossawa Tanner in Paris (1931) and studied mural painting with Diego Rivera in Mexico City (1936). From the European schools he learnt strong composition and the narrative power of Goya. He was concerned to amplify the problems of Black Americans, and his murals (influenced by Rivera) carry sharp commentaries on subjects such as the poor social conditions of his compatriots and forebears in Georgia, the Amistad slave uprising and the creation of Talladega College (e.g. the Amistad Murals, Talladega College, AL). In the South, Woodruff discovered and taught several talented artists including Frederick Flemister, Robert Neal, and Albert Wells, all of whose work bore the mark of Woodruff’s bold style and methods. From the 1950s his work became increasingly abstract as he absorbed the influence of the New York Abstract Expressionists (e.g. Ancestral Memory, Detroit, MI, Inst. A., and Celestial Gate, Atlanta, GA, Spelman Coll.).
Woodruff’s work as a painter was equalled by his graphic productions, including many wood-engravings, in which medium he often used his knowledge of French Cubism and Expressionism to create images of protest against racism (e.g. By Parties Unknown and Giddap, both c. 1935; Charleston, SC, Gibbes Mus. A.). While a faculty member at Atlanta University (1931–45), he launched the launched the ‘Art Annuals’, a series of exhibitions for African American artists from which a collection of art for the university (later Clark Atlanta University) was begun. After moving to New York, he taught at the Harlem Community Art Center, and at New York University (1945–68). ["Woodruff, Hale." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 15, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T092209.]
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