African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by African Americans. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".
Betye Irene Saar is an African American artist known for her work in the medium of assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, which engaged myths and stereotypes about race and femininity. Her work is considered highly political, as she challenged negative ideas about African Americans throughout her career; Saar is best known for her artwork that critiques American racism toward Black people.
April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.
Samella Sanders Lewis was an American visual artist and art historian. She worked primarily as a printmaker and painter. She has been called the "Godmother of African American Art". She received Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the College Art Association (CAA) in 2021.
“Art is not a luxury as many people think – it is a necessity. It documents history – it helps educate people and stores knowledge for generations to come.” – Dr. Samella Lewis
Conrad Marca-Relli was an American artist who belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, John Ferren, Marca-Relli and others became a leading art movement of the postwar era.
Nancy Holt was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other media, including film and photography. Since 2018, her legacy has been cared for by Holt/Smithson Foundation.
Thelma Beatrice Johnson Streat (1912–1959) was an African-American artist, dancer, and educator. She gained prominence in the 1940s for her art, performance and work to foster intercultural understanding and appreciation.
Hank Willis Thomas is an American conceptual artist. Based in Brooklyn, New York, he works primarily with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture.
Squeak Carnwath is an American contemporary painter and arts educator. She is a professor emerita of art at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a studio in Oakland, California, where she has lived and worked since 1970.
Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.
Sylvia Anne Edwards was an American abstract artist. Edwards first exhibited her work in 1975, and would be featured in more than thirty solo exhibitions in the US, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during her lifetime.
Nancy Buchanan is a Los Angeles-based artist best known for her work in installation, performance, and video art. She played a central role in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Her work has been exhibited widely and is collected by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.
Alexandra Rozenman is a contemporary Russian-American painter, graphic designer, and book illustrator. She is recognized for her works where visual artifacts are used as the means for telling intricate, idiosyncratic, compelling stories. Her work has been on exhibit in the leading museums, including the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in her native Moscow, and deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Rozenman lives in Boston and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Jefferson Pinder is an African-American performance artist whose work provokes commentary about race and struggle.
Gregory Amenoff is an American painter. He is located in the tradition of the early American Modernist painters Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Burchfield, Milton Avery, Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley. In the early 80s his work was often associated with a style of painting called organic abstraction and exhibited alongside artists Bill Jensen, Katherine Porter and Terry Winters.
Shinique Smith is an American visual artist, known for her colorful installation art and paintings that incorporate found textiles and collage materials. She is based in Los Angeles, California.
Lisa C Soto is a visual artist based in Los Angeles, California. The themes of her work are informed by both "her Caribbean heritage and her continuous movements between continents and islands." Soto's drawings, installations and sculptures embody the struggle between connections and disconnections. Supporting the belief that all things, seen and unseen are essentially linked. There is a conversation that includes a personal and a universal situation, an interplay between the micro and the macro. Questioning the endless conflicts, the creation of artificial differences, and the establishment of borders. While exploring the essence of the forces at work in the macrocosm. Shaping what those energies, frequencies, and vibrations might look like.
Donna N. Schuster was an American easel painter, who created work in the style of modern impressionism using the medium of oil and watercolor. She focused her work in Wisconsin then later moved to Los Angeles, California where she died in 1953.
Rebecca Gabriel is an American contemporary realist painter and figurative artist, specialising in the Renaissance tradition.
Evita Tezeno is an American artist currently based in Dallas, Texas. She works in collage art, employing patterned hand-painted papers and found objects. Tezeno's work is influenced by modernists including Romare Bearden, and is characterized by depictions of scenes from her life, family, and childhood memories in South Texas. Her work aims to present a cohesive portrayal of Black America, drawing inspiration from artists such as Elizabeth Catlett and William H. Johnson. In 2012, she was awarded the Elizabeth Catlett Printmaking Award.