Charles White

(American, 1918–1979)

Charles White was an American artist known for murals and prints which often portrayed African American subjects. In particular, he used printmaking as a way to communicate with a wider audience, and produced political cartoons and reasonably priced works as a way to ensure his art remained accessible to the masses. White’s mural, The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy (1943) at Hampton University is perhaps his best-known work, depicting famous African Americans across history. He saw art as a vehicle for social activism, once remarking: “Art must be an integral part of the struggle. It can’t simply mirror what’s taking place. It must adapt itself to human needs. It must ally itself with the forces of liberation. The fact is, artists have always been propagandists. I have no use for artists who try to divorce themselves from the struggle.”

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 Multiple art schools rescinded White’s acceptance after learning of his race, but eventually he received a full scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.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.