Douglas, Aaron

Douglas, Aaron (1899–1979). American painter and illustrator, probably the best known among the visual artists who were involved in the (primarily literary) Harlem Renaissance. He was born into a working-class family in Topeka, Kansas, and studied fine art at Nebraska University, completing his degree in 1922 after service in the army in the First World War. In 1925 he moved to New York, where he met Charles Johnson, editor of Opportunity, the journal of the National Urban League, an association that fought racial discrimination, and also William E. B. Du Bois, a leading sociologist and editor of Crisis, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. From 1926 Douglas made illustrations for both journals, creating positive images of black history and culture that challenged the stereotype of the ‘negro’ familiar to white American society. His dramatic use of black-and-white was influenced by the German-born painter and graphic artist Winold Reiss (1886–1953), who taught him privately, 1925–7. In 1926 Douglas met Albert C. Barnes, and in 1927–8 he spent a year at the Barnes Foundation, where the work he studied included Cubist paintings and West African masks. Their influence, together with imagery from ancient Egyptian art, can be seen in Douglas's best-known work, the mural series Aspects of Negro Life (1934), painted for the Schomberg Library in Harlem and now in New York Public Library. The murals feature both secular and religious imagery and allude to issues such as slavery and notions of utopia. Douglas's other work included landscapes and portraits. From 1940 to 1966 he taught at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and he lived in Nashville for the rest of his life.