University of Kentucky Art Museum
Lexington, KY
606-257-5716
Ellis Wilson (1899-1977)
April 9 - June 25, 2000
On April 9, 2000 the University Art Museum
opened an important exhibition of paintings by the African American artist
and Kentucky native Ellis Wilson (1899-1977). A representational painter,
Wilson's early work includes still lifes and portraits of family and friends.
He was particularly interested in--and noted for--genre scenes of the daily
activities of the African American community, and his paintings garnered
several awards. His portrayal of a worker in a New Jersey aircraft engine
factory won the 1944 Guggenheim award, an award he won again in 1945, in
addition to second prize in the 1952 Terry Art Institute National Contest.
These prizes enabled him to travel throughout the South and to Haiti where
he produced many works of African American and Haitian daily life.
(left: Chair Vendors, Haiti, 1965, oil on masonite, Rose Art Museum,
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA)
Margaret
Vendryes, writing in the catalogue that accompanies this exhibition, notes
that: "Wilson made art for the sheer joy of recreating, in color applied
with forever dancing brushstrokes, what he witnessed in other people's lives.
He was an insatiable recorder of the beauty that most take for granted."
(left: Lumberjacks, 1944-45, oil on composite board, Speed
Art Museum, Louisville, KY)
The son of a barber and amateur painter, Wilson was born
in Mayfield, Kentucky, and attended 
Kentucky State College in Frankfort for two years
before enrolling in the Chicago Art Institute, from which he graduated in
1923. For the next five years, he worked in Chicago as a commercial artist
and, in 1927, he was featured in a Chicago Art League festival alongside
other prominent African American artists, such as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Edward
Mitchell Bannister, and Richmond Barthe. Wilson moved New York City in 1928,
where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. In the 1930s, he participated
in the Harmon Foundation traveling exhibitions and he produced work for
the Works Progress Administration / Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1940.
During the war, he was commissioned by the Citizens Committee for the Army
and Navy to create religious triptychs for barrack and naval chapels.
(right: Two Women with Lanterns, c. 1950s, oil on masonite, Stanback
Museum and Planetarium, Orangeburg, SC)
The
exhibition catalogue The Art of Ellis Wilson with essays by exhibition
curator Albert F. Sperath, Margaret R. Vendryes, Steven H, Jones, and Eva
F. King will be available at the museum. (left: Still Life with
Fruit, 1950, oil on board, Michael Rosenfield Gallery, New York, NY)
This exhibition was organized by Albert Sperath, director
of the University Art Galleries at Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky.
It premiered at the Murray State University Clara M. Eagle Art Gallery in
February 2000 prior to traveling to the University of Kentucky Art Museum.
Read more about the University
Art Museum, University of Kentucky in Resource
Library Magazine
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line
to see enlargements.
rev. 1/29/11
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Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2011 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
On April 9, 2000 the University Art Museum
opened an important exhibition of paintings by the African American artist
and Kentucky native Ellis Wilson (1899-1977). A representational painter,
Wilson's early work includes still lifes and portraits of family and friends.
He was particularly interested in--and noted for--genre scenes of the daily
activities of the African American community, and his paintings garnered
several awards. His portrayal of a worker in a New Jersey aircraft engine
factory won the 1944 Guggenheim award, an award he won again in 1945, in
addition to second prize in the 1952 Terry Art Institute National Contest.
These prizes enabled him to travel throughout the South and to Haiti where
he produced many works of African American and Haitian daily life.
(left: Chair Vendors, Haiti, 1965, oil on masonite, Rose Art Museum,
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA)
