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Art has been a powerful tool of both personal expression and social transformation, and Black artists helped direct the course of the art industry. Their works often speak of perseverance, beauty and struggle, and they contain a wealth of insights about history, selfhood and society.  From the past to the present, these artists broke down boundaries and have influenced generations of artists and art enthusiasts.

The Most Popular Black Artists in History

When we think of the most well-known Black artists, a few names automatically pop up because they have made art history. Artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jacob Lawrence and Faith Ringgold are household names today, revered for their personal style, their creativity and their ability to elevate deprived voices to the top of the art world.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of the most recognisable artists of the present, started out as a graffiti artist before turning to painting. Through gritty, expressive lines and societal observations, his work verbalized the dramas of Blackness, race and the brutality of the city. Basquiat’s work was both intimate and universal, severing the boundaries between the realm of art and the world of street.

Image source: Global Leadership Institute of Innovation

Jacob Lawrence was another great Harlem Renaissance leader who also produced some of the most vibrant, influential accounts of Black life in America. His “The Migration of the Negro” series (1941) was and still is one of the most compelling images of the black experience, describing the migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the early 20th century.

Image Source: DC Moore Gallery

Faith Ringgold is best known for her provocative and engaging visual art – storytelling, social change, and explosive visual imagery. Her most renowned work are “story quilts” which use painting and quilting to create narratives about African American history, culture, and civil rights movements. Ringgold’s paintings routinely tackle questions of race, gender and inequality, and she’s long pushed for representation of Black women in the arts. As well as her quilts, Ringgold’s other mediums include painting, sculpture and children’s books – and each work is personal and politically charged. Her expressive aesthetics and commitment to social justice have made her a giant of modern art.

Image Source: NPR

Famous Black Artists Today

Black artists are still making art today, bringing new insights, new technologies, and vital social messages to the forefront. The most famous contemporary Black artists include Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas and Theaster Gates.

Kerry James Marshall is famous for his paintings that reflect the history of Black Americans. His portraits, which often focus on African Americans, disprove stereotypes while instilling pride and dignity in his subjects. One of his best-known pieces, “Past Times” (1997), is a commentary on the blackness of traditional Western art, and reimagines the force of representation.

Image Source: Hyperallergic

Mickalene Thomas is a female portraitist who draws expressive and flirtatious black women using rhinestones, enamel, and acrylics. Her work defies the stereotypical notions of beauty and femininity, and highlights Black women as fierce, diverse individuals. In her art, Thomas has helped to transform the modern notions of race, gender and selfhood. The artist and urban planner.

Image Source: Brooklyn Museum

Theaster Gates draws on the art, architecture and community in his creations. Gates’s “Dorchester Projects” have been used to revitalize parts of Chicago, re-imagining vacant structures as cultural spaces. His work engages with issues of place, race and the social-political role of art in cities.

Image Source: The New Yorker

Influential Black Painters

Black painters left a deep mark on art in the modern and contemporary period. They’ve created movements, defied the status quo and developed new visual languages that revolutionized the art world.

Aaron Douglas, the founder of African American art, would be one of the biggest influencers of the Harlem Renaissance. His murals and drawings were influenced by African and African American culture, often melding Art Deco and modernism. Douglas’s prints reveled in Blackness and blackness, and they offered visual testimony to a time of racial turmoil and cultural awakening.

Image Source: National Gallery Of Art

Alma Thomas, one of the first African American women to receive a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her abstract, colorful paintings drew inspiration from color field painting and the natural world. Thomas’s role as an early Black woman artist was only recently acknowledged.

Image Source: Chrysler Museum Of Art

Famous African American Sculptors

There are also African American sculptors who have contributed to the world of art, leaving behind powerful pieces about identity, race and history. Artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, David Hammons and Melvin Edwards have made work that forces us to relive histories of racism and injustice.

Elizabeth Catlett authored works that glorified Black women, in many cases through depictions of the mother and the strength. Her sculptures were delicate and empowering, combining naturalism with symbolism to convey African American power and camaraderie.

Image Source: The New York Times

David Hammons, the conceptual and provocative sculptor, asks the viewer to think about race, culture, and art politics. His appropriation of material possessions and his play with Blackness through hair, dirt, and bones has earned him a special place in modern art.

Image Source: The Nation

Melvin Edwards is known for his steel sculptures that typically portray themes of struggle and self-realization. His “Lynch Fragments” series is an emotional, visceral critique of US race violence, rendered in welded steel to produce raw, abstract forms.

Image Source: Stephan Friedman Gallery

Famous Black Pop Art Artists

Pop art, as an art form embracing mass culture and consumerism, has also been influenced by Black artists. Keith Haring and Andy Warhol were well-known artists in this style, but pop art has also been done by several Black artists such as Glenn Ligon, Richard Hunt and Betye Saar.

Betye Saar,  a mixed-media artist who uses objects as a political point of departure, Betye Saar’s work takes on themes of race, history and gender. Her most recognizable contribution, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972), was a radical reinvention of the stereotyped Aunt Jemima, turning her from a scapegoat to a symbol of freedom.

Image Source: Betty

In Glenn Ligon’s art, we frequently encounter words and images from pop culture, literature and history, all of which raise questions about race, identity and representation in America. His work draws from conceptual art, Pop Art and black history.

Image Source: Thomas Dane Gallery

Richard Hunt was an African American sculptor known for his early work in public sculpture, as well as his use of metal materials including steel, aluminium and bronze. One of the first African American sculpture figures to receive widespread popularity, Hunt’s monumental sculptures, such as Morning (1984) and Flight (1991), are in prominent public locations across the US. His sculptures often reflect on African American identity and include cultural and symbolic references in modernist structures. Hunt’s manipulation of metal to form fluid, moving forms has rendered him a technical innovator, and his work continues the ongoing discussion between abstract expressionism and African American culture. Widely acclaimed for his art, Hunt has won many awards and continues to influence future generations of artists.

Image Source: Carter Museum

Top Black Contemporary Artists

A number of today’s black artists are transforming art with new tools and messages. Artists such as Tschabalala Self, Jordan Casteel and Amy Sherald ****are all gaining attention for different ways of thinking about Blackness, selfhood, and the world.

Tschabalala Self writes large, vivid pieces on black womanhood and the body. Her works, abstract and figurative, address sexuality, gender and race.

Image Source: Pillar Corrias

Jordan Casteel’s work on portraiture allows ordinary black people to come out; he depicts personal, respectful images of people ignored in the mainstream media. Her images, primarily of others she sees around her block, emphasize the individual as well as the community.

Image Source: Medium

Amy Sherald is famous for her modern, unique portraits of Black people that question art’s notions of race and identity. She made a big splash with her portrait of the former First Lady Michelle Obama, released in 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery. Sherald’s trademark portraits are of pastel-colored, pastel-skinned figures against graphic, contrasting backgrounds, and are simultaneously abstract and realist. Her portraits generally talk about strength, beauty and Blackness in some way, their subjects contemplating or silently assertive. By excising any background or context in her paintings, Sherald invites the eye directly into the subject, which makes it more human and individual. She has been critically celebrated for the new, stylized way in which she depicts portraiture, and is lauded for changing the narrative of Blackness in art today.

Image Source: ArtNet

Celebrating Black Art During Black History Month

Black History Month can be a way to honor Black artists, remember what they’ve done, and move forward on the conversation around race, identity and representation in art. Whether it is in the richness of Basquiat’s paintings, or in Bearden’s haunting collages, or in the expressions of the present generation, Black artists have always defined visual culture. It’s impossible to overstate the contribution of Black artists to modern and contemporary art. Their work continues to reach audiences around the world with their message to explore our past, face unpopular truths, and conceive of a world in which all voices matter.