April Birthday Artists and Featured Artist Charles White

Posted by Meg Nola Apr 30, 2009

April is a month full of artist birthdays, including Surrealist-inclined Max Ernst (April 2) and Joan Miro (April 20), the incomparable Leonardo da Vinci (April 15), Op Artists Victor Vasarely (April 9) and Bridget Riley (April 24), French Neoclassicist Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun (April 16) and French Romantic master Eugene Delacroix (April 26). Additionally, Raphael, one of the great geniuses of the High Renaissance, is often said to have been born and died on April 6, with both dates marking Good Friday.

Charles Wilbert White (1918-1979) is another April birthday artist (April 2), born to an African-American mother and a Creek Indian father. He grew up on Chicago’s Southside in a very poor neighborhood; his mother was a domestic worker who sometimes had to bring young Charles along while she cleaned houses. White took on odd jobs at an early age to help his mother pay the bills, and while he was bored at school and often skipped out, he just as often headed to the Chicago Public Library or Art Institute to further his own personal education. Eventually he attended the School of the Art Institute, working as a valet and cook to pay for what his scholarship funds didn’t cover.

Following his formal training, White produced murals for the Works Progress Administration, married sculptor Elizabeth Catlett and received a Rosenwald grant to tour and study southern America. The art White produced during this period focused on the South’s strong African-American culture, as well as the underlying segregation and inequality he witnessed firsthand. White also visited Mexico and spent time at the Taller de Grafica printmaking workshop, which included Diego Rivera and David Siquieros among its famed artists. Back in the United States, White became part of the New York Graphic Workshop and the Sugar Hill community that included W.E.B. Du Bois and Duke Ellington.

Always concerned about those who truly needed to receive the messages beyond his art, White produced portfolio printbooks of his works so that they could be more easily purchased by less affluent African-Americans. White divorced, remarried, and then moved to California in his later years; his productive career was marked by resilience and a keen consciousness of the human condition. ** Click here to take a look at Charles White’s portrait of musician Huddie Ledbetter, best known as Lead Belly.