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For a Canadian actor of same name, see Aaron Douglas (actor).

Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1898 – February 3, 1979) was an American painter and a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Later life 3 Style 4 Works 5 References

A native of Topeka, Kansas, Douglas graduated from Topeka High School in 1917. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1922. In 1925, Douglas moved to New York City, settling in Harlem. Just a few months after his arrival he began to produce illustrations for both The Crisis and Opportunity, the two most important magazines associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He also began studying with Winold Reiss, a German artist who had been hired by Alain Locke to illustrate The New Negro. Reiss's teaching helped Douglas develop the modernist style he would employ for the next decade. Douglas’s engagement with African and Egyptian design brought him to the attention of W. E. B. DuBois and Alain Locke, who were pressing for young African American artists to express their African heritage and African American folk culture in their art.

In 1928-29, Douglas studied African and Modern European art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania on a grant from the foundation. In 1931 he traveled to Paris, where he spent a year studying more traditional French painting and drawing techniques at the Academie Scandinave. It was during the early 1930s that Douglas completed the most important works of his career, his murals at Fisk University and at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).

In 1937, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 29 years. Coinciding with this move was a shift to a more traditional painting style, including portraits and landscapes like the one at right.

Douglas was known for his abstract, 2-dimensional black and white paintings in which he broke down figures of traditional African styles into geometric objects. His paintings consisted of flat forms, hard edges, and repetitive geometric shapes. He wanted people to understand African-American spiritual identity, and, in some ways, he may have succeeded: Douglas was often called the 'Father of African American art' ^{[citation needed]}.

• Illustrations for The Crisis and Opportunity, 1925-1930
• Illustrations for James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones, 1927
• Mural at Club Ebony, 1927 (destroyed)
• Illustrations for Paul Morand, Black Magic, 1929
• Harriet Tubman, mural at Bennett College, 1930
• Symbolic Negro History, murals at Fisk University, 1930
• Dance Magic, murals for the Sherman Hotel, Chicago, 1930-31
• Aspects of Negro Life, murals at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1934

• Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present (Pantheon, 1993)
• "Douglas, Aaron". American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 6:789-790.
• Kirschke, Amy Hellene. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance. Jackson, Miss. : University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
• Myers, Aaron. "Douglas, Aaron." Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2002. CD-ROM. 2002 ed. Redmond, Wa. : Microsoft, 2001.
• http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/adouglas.html