Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas studied at University of Nebraska in Lincoln and later taught drawing in a high school in Kansas City. He moved to New York City and became in the mid-1920s an important influence in the so-called Harlem Renaissance, a period which would become crucial for the development of a visual language and of political consciousness among African-American artists. Douglas began work as an illustrator of short stories and poetry by African-American authors. However, the idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of his later works Douglas developed in easel paintings and large-scale murals. In these he uses abstract elements simultaneously as references to motifs of traditional African art and to establish complex links to everyday reality in Harlem.