Art by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Augusta Savage to the New York World newspaper

20 May 1923

Born in Florida in 1892, Augusta Savage fought to become a sculptor. As a young girl – the seventh of her parents’ fourteen children – she spent many an hour quietly moulding small figurines from local clay, much to the annoyance of her abusive father who, according to Savage, ‘almost whipped all the art out of me’. Instead she found support and encouragement from her teachers, and in 1919 she moved to New York to study and thrive at the Cooper Union art school. In 1923 Savage applied to take part in a women’s art programme at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in France, and her application was initially successful. However, her fellowship was soon cancelled by the school’s officials who, having learned of her skin colour, believed her race would be ‘disagreeable to some white students’. A campaign to reverse the cancellation, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, was unsuccessful; this letter, from Savage to the New York World newspaper, also had little impact. For the rest of her career, Savage campaigned for the rights of African-American artists, and in 1932 opened the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.