Today in our History – October 3, 1979 – Charles Wilbert White Jr. dies.
GM – LIF – Today’s American Champion was an American artist known for his chronicling of African American related subjects in paintings, drawings, lithographs, and murals. He is best known work is The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy, a mural at Hampton University. In 2018, the centenary year of his birth, the first major retrospective exhibition of his work was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art.
Today in our History – October 3, 1979 – Charles Wilbert White Jr. (April 2, 1918 – October 3, 1979) dies.
Charles W. White, a leading black artist whose drawings, lithographs and paintings depicted black Americans in struggle and triumph, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure in the Wadsworth veterans Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 61 years old and lived in Altadena, Calif.
A victim of pleurisy and tuberculosis contracted during World War II, Mr. White had had one lung removed. He later developed emphysema and had been hospitalized four times since last January. His wife, son, daughter and Benjamin Horowitz of the Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles, were with him when he died.
Benny Andrews, a New York painter and archivist of black art and artists, said yesterday that among black people Charles White's art was perhaps the best known. “People who didn't know his name,” Mr. Andrews said, “knew and recognized his work.”
His easily identifiable pictures have been described as strong, vigorous and majestic. They are in 49 museums and have been seen in 123 institutional exhibitions, in 48 books illustrating and discussing his works, and in 53 one‐man shows. They won him 39 American and European awards. Female figures are in most of his works; he said they “represent qualities that are good, real and substantial.”
In “Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White,” a book now out of print, Harry Belafonte, the singer, Who Was a friend and subject, said in the foreword:
“His lines are clear, his people are alive with a zest for life and the story of living manifest in their faces and their bodies.”
Mr. White portrayed only black people. He was asked in an interview with Jeffrey Elliotofthe Negro History Bulletin if his work had “an appeal beyond your own people.”
He replied: “I like to think that my work has a universality to it. I deal with love, hope, courage, freedom, dignity the full gamut of human spirit. When work, though, I think of my own people. That's only natural. However, my philosophy doesn't exclude any nation or race of people. I do have a special concern for my own people — their history, their culture, their struggle to survive in this, racist country. And I'm proud of being black.”
Charles Wilbert White was born and went to school in Chicago. His mother gave him a paint set for his 17th birthday, and from then paint he persisted in painting. He won scholarships to the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the Frederic Mizen Academy of Art, which contended that a mistake had been made and refused him entry. However, he applied to the Art Institute of Chicago and, in 1937, won a scholarship.
A major influence was his visit to Mexico in the late 1940's with his wife, Elizabeth Catlett, the sculptor, from whom he was later divorced. He told Walter Christmas in an interview in 1950: “Mexico was a milestone. I saw artists working to create an art for and about the people. This had the strongest influence on my whole approach. It clarified the direction in which I wanted to move.”
Two other influences were the five lynching’s within 15 years of three of his uncles and two cousins in the South and his own trips to the South, where he received positive and negative lasting impressions.
Mr. White was an artist in residence at Howard University in 1945 and was teaching at the time of his death at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles. He is survived by his wife, Frances; a daughter, Jessica, and a son, Ian. Research more about his great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!