Alma Thomas facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Alma Thomas
Portrait of a Lady (Alma Thomas), 1947 by Laura Wheeler Waring
Born	Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891-09-22)September 22, 1891 Columbus, Georgia, U.S.
Died	February 24, 1978(1978-02-24) (aged 86) Washington, D.C.
Education	Howard University Columbia University
Known for	Painting
Notable work	Sky Light; Iris, Tulips, Jonquils and Crocuses; Watusi (Hard Edge); Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto; Air View of a Spring Nursery; Milky Way; Flowers at Jefferson Memorial; Untitled (Music Series); Red Rose Sonata; Breeze Rustling Through Fall Flowers; The Eclipse
Movement	Expressionism Realism

Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American artist and teacher known for her vibrant, abstract paintings. She didn't start painting full-time until she was was 68 or 69 years old, when she retired from teaching. Thomas achieved success as an African-American female artist despite the segregation and prejudice of her time, which makes her story even more inspiring!

Alma is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Her paintings are displayed in notable museums and collections, and they have been the subject of several books and solo museum exhibitions.

Early life and education

Alma Thomas was born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia. She was the oldest of four daughters of John Harris Thomas, a businessman, and Amelia Cantey Thomas, a dress designer. Her mother and aunts, she later wrote, were teachers and Tuskegee Institute graduates.

Alma was creative as a child and enjoyed making small pieces of artwork such as puppets, sculptures, and plates, mainly out of clay from the river behind her childhood home. Despite a growing interest in the arts, Thomas was "not allowed" to go into art museums as a child. She was provided with music lessons, as her mother played the violin.

Alma Thomas's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia

In 1907, when Thomas was 16, the family moved to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., to escape racial violence in Georgia and to seek the benefits of the public school system of Washington. Describing the reason for the family move, she later wrote, "When I finished grade school in Columbus, there was nowhere that I could continue my education, so my parents decided to move the family to Washington."

African American Heritage Trail marker, Alma Thomas House, 1530 15th Street, NW, Washington DC

In Washington, Thomas attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes. About them, she said "When I entered the art room, it was like entering heaven. . . . The Armstrong High School laid the foundation for my life."

In high school, she excelled at math and science, and architecture specifically interested her. A miniature schoolhouse that she made from cardboard using techniques learned in her architecture studies at Armstrong was exhibited at the Smithsonian in 1912. Although she expressed an interest in becoming an architect, it was unusual for women to work in this profession and this limited her prospects.

After graduating from high school in 1911, she studied kindergarten education at Miner Normal School (now known as University of the District of Columbia), earning her teaching credentials in 1913. In 1914, she obtained a teaching position in the Princess Anne schools on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she taught for four months. In 1915, she started teaching kindergarten at the Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware, staying there until 1921.

Thomas entered Howard University in 1921, at age 30, entering as a junior because of her previous teacher training. She started as a home economics student, planning to specialize in costume design, only to switch to fine art after studying under art department founder James V. Herring. Her artistic focus at Howard was on sculpture. She earned her Bachelors of Science in Fine Arts in 1924 from Howard.

Post-college career

Thomas at opening in the Whitney Museum, 1972

In 1924, Thomas began teaching art at Shaw Junior High School, a Black school in the then-segregated public schools of Washington, D.C., where she worked until her retirement in 1960; she wrote, "I was there for thirty-five years and occupied the same classroom." While she taught at Shaw Junior High, Thomas continued to pursue her art, her formal and informal education, and activities with the Washington, D.C. art community, the latter often in ways connected to Howard University.

During this time Thomas painted, especially in watercolor; while her style in the 1930s was described as still "quite traditional" and naturalistic, she has been called a "brilliant watercolorist." Over summers, she would travel to New York City to visit art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and galleries.

During the summers of 1930 through 1934, she attended Teachers College of Columbia University, earning her Masters in Art Education in 1934; her studies focused on sculpture, and she wrote her thesis on the use of marionettes.

In the summer of 1935, she further studied marionettes in New York City with the German-American puppeteer Tony Sarg, known as the father of modern puppetry in America.

In the 1940s Thomas also joined Lois Mailou Jones's artist community, "The Little Paris Group (or "Little Paris Studio," or "Little Paris Studio group"). This group of Black Washington artists was founded by Jones and Céline Marie Tabary, both artists and members of the Howard University art faculty (Jones from 1930 to 1977, and Tabary beginning in 1945). It met either weekly or twice per week, at Jones' studio, the "Little Paris studio," in her home at 1220 Quincy Street NE, in Washington's Brookland neighborhood. It existed for five years. It offered developing artists an opportunity to paint from the model and improve their techniques.

In 1958, Thomas visited art centers in Western Europe with Temple University students in an extensive tour arranged by that university's Tyler School of Art.

In 1950, at the age of 59, she began a decade of studies at American University, taking night and weekend classes, studying Art History and painting.

Artistic career

March on Washington (1964) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

When Thomas began her studies at American University in 1950, her style evolved in several major shifts, from figurative painting to cubism and then to abstract expressionism. She began to embrace the bright colors that she would later use in her signature style.

Within twelve years after her first class at American, she began creating Color Field paintings, inspired by the work of the New York School and Abstract Expressionism.

Thomas was known to work in her home studio (a small living room), creating her paintings by "propping the canvas on her lap and balancing it against the sofa." She worked out of the kitchen in her house, creating works like Watusi (Hard Edge) (1963), a manipulation of the Matisse cutout The Snail, in which Thomas shifted shapes around and changed the colors that Matisse used, and named it after a Chubby Checker song.

Pansies in Washington (1969) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Earth Sermon - Beauty, Love and Peace (1971) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2022

In contrast with most other members of the Washington Color School, she did not use masking tape to outline the shapes in her paintings. Her technique involved drawing faint pencil lines across the canvas to create shapes and patterns, and filling in the canvas with paint afterwards. Her pencil lines are obvious in many of her finished pieces, as Thomas did not erase them.

Thomas's post-retirement artwork had a notable focus on color theory. Later works were inspired by space exploration and the cosmos. The title of her 1972 painting, 'Mars Dust,' alluded to news stories of a dust storm on Mars.trate on beauty and happiness in my painting rather than on man's inhumanity to man." Speaking again about her use of color she said: "Color is life, and light is the mother of color."

Her first retrospective exhibit was in 1966 (April 24–May 17) at the Gallery of Art at Howard University, curated by art historian James A. Porter. It included 34 works from 1959 to 1966. For this exhibition, she created Earth Paintings, a series of nature-inspired abstract works, including Resurrection (1966), which in 2014 would be bought for the White House collection. Thomas and the artist Delilah Pierce, a friend, would drive into the countryside where Thomas would seek inspiration, pulling ideas from the effects of light and atmosphere on rural environments.

In 1972, at the age of 81, Thomas was the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. After her show at the Whitney, Thomas's fame within the fine arts community immediately skyrocketed.

Personal life

Thomas was, according to all evidence, never married. She told the New York Times in 1977 that she had "never married a man but my art. What man would have ever appreciated what I was up to?" She had an active social life, with many artist friends.

Death

Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978, in Howard University Hospital, following aortal surgery.

Artistic style

Thomas developed a unique style of painting that involved using small, colorful brushstrokes to create patterns on the canvas. Her paintings often look like mosaics or stained glass windows. She used bright colors like red, yellow, blue, and green to make her paintings full of energy and joy.

Her watercolor and oil paintings incorporated the use of (sometimes overlapping) colorful rectangles. She continued to use this technique, in works which explored colors found in trees, flowers, gardens, and other natural imagery.

Interesting facts about Alma Thomas

• Alma's father had an encounter with a lynch mob shortly before Alma was born, and her family attributed her poor hearing to the fright from that incident.
• She was possibly the first African-American woman to earn a bachelor's degree in art.
• In 1936, Thomas founded an organization, called the School Arts League Project, to bring art opportunities to children.
• Thomas helped James W. Herring, her former professor at Howard, and Alonzo J. Aden found the Barnett-Aden Gallery, the first successful Black-owned private art gallery in the United States in 1943. She served as the gallery's vice president.
• Thomas rarely missed a museum or gallery opening in Washington.
• In 1963, she walked in the March on Washington and portrayed the event in one of her paintings. A detail from that painting became a 2005 U.S. postage stamp.
• She called her paintings 'Alma's Stripes,' as the overlapping shapes of paint created elongated rectangles.
• Thomas lived in the same family house in Washington, at 1530 15th Street, NW, from 1907 until her death in 1978. That home, now known as the Alma Thomas House, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
• In 2009, two paintings by Thomas were chosen by First Lady Michelle Obama to be exhibited in the White House during the Obama presidency.
• Her painting Resurrection (1966) was prominently hung in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House in 2015.
• In 2019, Thomas's 1970 painting A Fantastic Sunset was auctioned at Christie's for $2.655 million.
• A new record price was set for Thomas's work in 2021 when Alma's Flower Garden was sold in a private sale to an unidentified purchaser for $2.8 million.
• Thomas' papers were donated in several periods between 1979 and 2004 to the Archives of American Art by J. Maurice Thomas, Alma Thomas' sister.

Notable exhibitions

• Watercolors by Alma Thomas, 1960, Dupont Theatre Art Gallery
• Alma Thomas: A Retrospective Exhibition (1959-1966), 1966, Howard University Gallery of Art
• Alma Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1968, Franz Bader Gallery
• Recent Paintings by Alma W. Thomas: Earth and Space Series (1961–1971), 1971, Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University
• Alma W. Thomas, 1972, Whitney Museum of American Art
• Alma W. Thomas: Retrospective Exhibition, 1972, Corcoran Gallery of Art
• Alma W. Thomas: Paintings, 1973, Martha Jackson Gallery
• Alma W. Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1975, Howard University Gallery of Art
• Alma W. Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1976, H.C. Taylor Art Gallery, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
• A Life in Art: Alma Thomas, 1891-1978, 1981, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
• Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective of the Paintings, 1998, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, New Jersey State Museum, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and The Columbus Museum
• Alma Thomas: Phantasmagoria, Major Paintings from the 1970s, 2001, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, and Women's Museum: An Institution for the Future
• A Proud Continuum: Eight Decades of Art at Howard University, 2005, Howard University
• Color Balance: Paintings by Felrath Hines and Alma Thomas, 2010, Nasher Museum of Art
• Alma Thomas, 2016, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, and The Studio Museum in Harlem
• Alma Thomas: Resurrection Exhibition, 2019, Mnuchin Gallery
• Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, 2021, Chrysler Museum of Art

Notable works in public collections

See also

In Spanish: Alma Thomas para niños