Charles White
(American, 1918–1979)
Biography
White was born on April 2, 1918 on the south side of Chicago. Although he was raised in Chicago, he often visited his mother’s family in Mississippi, and he learned about his African American and Southern heritage through these trips, which would later influence his art. He completed some high school but did not graduate, eventually going on to apply to art school. Multiple art schools rescinded White’s acceptance after learning of his race, but eventually he received a full scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1938, he was hired to do work for the Illinois affiliate of the Works Project Administration. He went on to teach in New Orleans, where he was briefly married to fellow artist Elizabeth Catlett, and then served in the army in WWII. In his later life, White moved to Los Angeles, and from 1965 to 1979, he taught at the Otis Art Institute, where his students included Alonzo Davis, David Hammons, and Kerry James Marshall. He died in 1979. White’s work came forward once more thanks to a major joint retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in 2018. His work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, among others.
Charles White Artworks
Charles White
Till he was six Frederick lived happily with , 1964
Sale Date: April 2, 2015
Auction Closed
Charles White
Head of a Man, in profile * Head of a Woman, , 1979
Sale Date: June 10, 2014
Auction Closed
Charles White
Wanted Poster Series #11 (positive and..., 1970
Sale Date: June 10, 2014
Auction Closed
Charles White
Untitled (Study for Mary McLeod Bethune mural), 1976
Sale Date: May 18, 2014
Auction Closed
Charles White
Untitled (Man With Newspaper and..., 1937–1938
Sale Date: February 13, 2014
Auction Closed