Aaron Douglas (after)
(1899-1979)
Note: This image was printed by Raj Bunnag from the original block. Bunnag is a Thai-American artist living in Durham, North Carolina. He received his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is the Curator of Exhibitions at CAM Raleigh. Bunnag’s current research delves into the systemic racism and white supremacy inherent in the foundations of American institutions and policies. His latest work examines the reemergence of American fascism and the resurrection of Jim Crow-era ideologies, exploring the dangers of collective white rage and fear. Through meticulous carving and bold storytelling, Bunnag elevates the relief print from a graphic medium to a vital site of intense cultural interrogation and historical reckoning.
Man Striving to be Man
1957 (conceived, later printing)
zinc plate etching on paper
5 x 3-1/2 inches
unsigned
Born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1899, Aaron Douglas emerged as the leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, shaping its aesthetic identity through a distinctive synthesis of modernism and African diasporic imagery. After early studies at the Detroit Institute of Arts and earning a BFA from the University of Nebraska in 1922, Douglas initially worked as a teacher before relocating to New York in 1925, drawn by the intellectual and cultural momentum of Alain Locke’s New Negro movement. There, his encounter with the German-born artist Winold Reiss proved fruitful, encouraging him to draw upon African forms and themes as the foundation of a new, modern visual language.
Douglas’s immediately recognizable mature style centers on silhouetted figures, rhythmic patterning, and radiating bands of light that structure space both formally and symbolically. These compositional devices, often organized in concentric arcs, guide the viewer through layered narratives of African American history, from ancestral origins to modern urban life. Rather than depicting specific events, Douglas constructed visual allegories, producing images that are at once historical, spiritual, and forward-looking.
This language found its fullest expression in his mural cycles, most notably the 1934 commission for the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). Across these panels, Douglas charted a sweeping vision of Black history through carefully orchestrated color harmonies and overlapping planes, achieving a balance between clarity of design and atmospheric depth. His work in illustration, appearing in publications such as Opportunity and The Crisis, further extended this visual vocabulary, helping to define the graphic identity of the Harlem Renaissance.
Beyond his artistic production, Douglas played a crucial institutional role in advancing African American art. A recipient of two Rosenwald Fellowships, which supported his travels to France, Haiti, and the American South, he also served as president of the Harlem Artists Guild, advocating for greater inclusion of Black artists within federal art programs. In 1939, he founded the art department at Fisk University, where he remained a central figure in arts education until his retirement in 1966, shaping generations of artists.
Douglas died in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1979. His work is held in major institutional collections, including Fisk University, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the de Young Museum, and has been the subject of significant scholarly reassessment, most notably in the exhibition Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008). Today, he is recognized not only as a participant in the Harlem Renaissance but also as the artist who gave it its enduring visual form.
Selected Exhibitions
Negro in Art Week, exhibition of primitive African sculpture, modern paintings, sculpture, drawings, applied art, and books; Art Institute of Chicago, IL, 1927
Exhibit of Fine Arts. Productions of American Negro Artists; Harmon Foundation, NY, NY, 1928 (Also, 1931, 1933, 1935)
Aaron Douglas; Caz-Delbo Gallery, NY, NY. (First solo show), 1933
AARON DOUGLAS; New York Public Library, 115th St. Branch, NY. (Oils and watercolors), 1936
Texas Centennial Exposition: Exhibition of Fine Art Productions by American Negroes; Hall of Negro Life, Texas Centennial Exposition, Dallas, TX, 1936
An Exhibition of the Harlem Artists Guild; New York Public Library, 115th St. Branch, NY, NY, 1937
Art of the American Negro; Howard University, Washington, DC, 1937
Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro (1851-1940); Tanner Art Galleries, Chicago, IL, 1940
The Negro Artist Comes of Age: A National Survey of Contemporary American Artists; Albany Institute of History and Art, NY, 1945.
Aaron Douglas; People's Art Center, Saint Louis, MO, 1947
AARON DOUGLAS: Exhibition of Paintings; Fisk University of Art Gallery, TN, 1948
The Negro In American Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Afro-American Art; Dickson Art Galleries, UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles, CA. 1966
Invisible Americans: Black Artists of the 1930s; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1968
Retrospective Exhibition: Paintings by AARON DOUGLAS; Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University, TN, 1971
Black Artists: Two Generations; Newark Museum, NJ, 1971
Two Centuries of Black American Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, 1976
WPA and the Black Artist: Chicago and New York; Chicago Public Library, IL, 1978
Unbroken Circle: Exhibition of African American Artists of the 1930's and 1940’s; Kenkeleba House, NY, NY, 1986
The Renaissance: Black Arts of the Twenties; Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, Washington, DC, 1986
The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, 1989
Narratives of African American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection; University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD, 1998
Black New York Artists of the 20th Century: Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY, 1999
Syncopated Rhythms: 20th-Century African American Art from the George and Joyce Wein Collection; Boston University Art Gallery, MA, 2006
AARON DOUGLAS: African American Modernist; Spenser Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, 2007
Carl Van Vechten, Aaron Douglas, 1933. Gelatin silver print, 10 x 8 inches. Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee. Image: Carl Van Vechten Papers, James Weldon Johnson Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. ©Van Vechten Trust
Recent and Current Exhibitions
Modern Black Culture: The Art of Aaron Douglas; Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
April 22–June 19, 2022.
At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism; Whitney Museum of American Art
May 7, 2022–February 26, 2023.
Included three important 1926 works by Douglas: Bravado, Flight, and Surrender.
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
February 25–July 28, 2024.
Southern/Modern: Rediscovering Southern Art from the First Half of the Twentieth Century; traveling exhibition
2023–2025.
Douglas’s The Toiler appeared in this major survey at the Georgia Museum of Art, Frist Art Museum, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, and Mint Museum Uptown.
David C. Driskell & Friends: Creativity, Collaboration, and Friendship; Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami
February 21–October 11, 2026 — currently on view.
This group exhibition brings together more than seventy works by thirty-five artists connected with Driskell, including Douglas, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Richard Mayhew, Alma Thomas, and Charles White.
Southern Gothic: Literary Intersections with Art from The Johnson Collection ; LSU Museum of Art, Baton Rouge
October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027.
Douglas’s circa-1935 painting The Toiler will be included in this examination of the tensions, histories, myths, and literary traditions associated with the American South.