Property from a Tennessee Private Collection

Description:

Attributed to Hale Woodruff (TN/GA/NY, 1900-1980), Untitled , Oil on Masonite, signed lower right, an abstract work in yellow, blue, brown and black. Frame size: 27 1/2 in. x 31 1/2 in.

Provenance: per consignor, purchased Jack Parker Gallery, St. Louis, c. 1990's.

Hale Woodruff was born in Cairo, Il in 1900 and grew up with his mother in Nashville, TN. A first generation artist of the New Negro Movement, he created paintings, prints, and murals that depict the historic struggle and perseverance of African Americans. He studied at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Harvard University, the School of the Art Institute Chicago, the Academie Moderne, the Academie Scandinave in Paris. In the summer of 1938 he studied mural painting alongside Diego Rivera in Mexico. After spending a few years in Paris between 1928-1931, Woodruff began teaching art at Atlanta University in 1931, where he created the country’s first fine art department for Southern black students. In 1946 he moved to New York where he continued teaching art at New York University up until his retirement in 1968. Woodruffs most widely acclaimed works of his early career is the Amistad murals he painted between 1939 and 1940 in the Savery Library at Talladega College in Alabama. During the 1940s, and later in his career, his work focused on Georgian landscapes and Southern black themes. Today examples of Woodruff's work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, and National Gallery of Art, among others. (TheJohnsonCollection.org)

Measurements: Height: of board 20 in. x Width: 24 in.

Condition:

Good condition, some craquelure to paint.