Alma Thomas

American painter (1891–1978)

Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D. C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35 year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School. Thomas, who is often considered a member of the Washington Color School art movement but alternatively classified by some as an Expressionist, earned her teaching degree from University of the District of Columbia (known as Miner Normal School at the time). She was the first graduate of Howard University's art department, and maintained connections to that university through her life. She achieved success as an African American female artist despite the segregation and prejudice of her time. Thomas's reputation has continued to grow since her death. Her paintings are displayed in notable museums and collections, and they have been the subject of several books and solo museum exhibitions. In 2021, a museum sold Thomas's painting Alma's Flower Garden in a private transaction for $2.8 million.

Alma Thomas was born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, as the oldest of four daughters, to John Harris Thomas, a businessman, and Amelia Cantey Thomas, a dress designer. Her mother and aunts, she later wrote, were teachers and Tuskegee Institute graduates. She was creative as a child, although her serious artistic career began much later in life. While growing up, Thomas displayed her artistic capabilities, and enjoyed making small pieces of artwork such as puppets, sculptures, and plates, mainly out of clay from the river behind her childhood home. She was provided with music lessons, as her mother played the violin. In 1907, when Thomas was 16, the family moved to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D. C., to escape racial violence in Georgia and to seek the benefits of the public school system of Washington. Her parents made this move despite that the family "kind of came down a bit," socially and economically, in leaving their upper middle class life in Georgia. Describing the reason for the family move, she later wrote, "When I finished grade school in Columbus, there was nowhere that I could continue my education, so my parents decided to move the family to Washington." Other writers have pointed to the Atlanta race riots and racial massacre of 1906 as among the reasons her family left Georgia. As another example of the racial violence that her family faced in Georgia, Alma's father had an encounter with a lynch mob shortly before Alma was born, and her family attributed her poor hearing to the fright from that incident. Although still segregated, the nation's capital was known to offer more opportunities for African Americans than most other cities. As she wrote in the 1970s, "At least Washington's libraries were open to Negroes, whereas Columbus excluded Negroes from its only library." In Washington, Thomas attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes. About them, she said "When I entered the art room, it was like entering heaven. . The Armstrong High School laid the foundation for my life."

In 1924, Thomas began teaching art at Shaw Junior High School, a Black school in the then segregated public schools of Washington, D. C., where she worked until her retirement in 1960; she wrote, "I was there for thirty five years and occupied the same classroom." She taught alongside fellow artist Malkia Roberts. While at Shaw Junior High, she started a community arts program that encouraged student appreciation of fine art. The program supported marionette performances and the distribution of student designed holiday cards which were given to soldiers at the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center. Also, according to her reminiscences, "At Shaw, I organized the first art gallery in the D. C. public schools in 1938, securing paintings by outstanding Negro artists from the Howard Gallery of Art." The three and a half decades of Thomas's teaching career, from 1924 to 1960, were described by Thurlow Tibbs, the D. C. African American art dealer (and grandson of Thomas's friend Lillian Evans, the opera singer) as Thomas's "fermenting period;" during them she absorbed many ideas and influences, and after 1960 from those ideas and influences she would create her own distinctive art. While she taught at Shaw Junior High, Thomas continued to pursue her art, her formal and informal education, and activities with the Washington, D. C. art community, the latter often in ways connected to Howard University. During this time Thomas painted, especially in watercolor; while her style in the 1930s was described as still "quite traditional" and naturalistic, she has been called a "brilliant watercolorist." Over summers, she would travel to New York City to visit art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and galleries. During the summers of 1930 through 1934, she attended Teachers College of Columbia University, earning her Masters in Art Education in 1934; her studies focused on sculpture, and she wrote her thesis on the use of marionettes. In the summer of 1935, she further studied marionettes in New York City with the German American puppeteer Tony Sarg, known as the father of modern puppetry in America. In 1936, she founded an organization, called the School Arts League Project, to bring art opportunities to children. In 1943, Thomas helped James W. Herring, her former professor at Howard, and Alonzo J. Aden found the Barnett Aden Gallery, the first successful Black owned private art gallery in the United States. She served as the gallery's vice president. Thomas's association with the Barnett Aden Gallery has been described as "critical to" and, according to curator Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, the "pivotal" development in, her development as a professional artist." It put her into contact with leading contemporary national artists, which "heightened her awareness of art trends and directions," and it provided exposure to local artists which "both challenged and inspired her." In the 1940s Thomas also joined Lois Mailou Jones's artist community, "The Little Paris Group (or "Little Paris Studio," or "Little Paris Studio group"). This group of Black Washington artists was founded by Jones and Céline Marie Tabary, both artists and members of the Howard University art faculty (Jones from 1930 to 1977, and Tabary beginning in 1945). The date of the group's founding is described variously as during the German occupation of Paris (i. e., 1940 to 1944), or 1948. It met either weekly at Jones' studio, the "Little Paris studio," in her home at 1220 Quincy Street NE, in Washington's Brookland neighborhood. It existed for five years. It offered developing artists an opportunity to paint from the model, Other members of the group in addition to Jones and Tabary included Delilah Pierce and Thomas, as well as Bruce Brown, Ruth Brown, Richard Dempsey, Barbara Linger, Don Roberts, Desdemona Wade, Frank West, and Elizabeth Williamson. In 1958, Thomas visited art centers in Western Europe with Temple University students in an extensive tour arranged by that university's Tyler School of Art. Her involvement with the Little Paris Group is said to have inspired Thomas to seek further academic training at American University. One source states that in the early 1950s, "the A. U. art department was regarded in many quarters as 'the' avant garde art department in the nation." Accordingly, in 1950, at the age of 59, she began a decade of studies at that university, taking night and weekend classes, studying Art History and painting. At American University she studied painting with Robert Franklin Gates and Ben "Joe" Summerford. But Jacob Kainen was her most influential teacher there, and would become a close friend for the rest of her lifetime. When Thomas studied with Kainen in fall 1957, he considered her as a fellow artist rather than as a student. Kainen had met Thomas in 1934, at the Barnet Aden Gallery, and in 1957, he agreed to take over teaching an intensive year long A. U. class for six selected top painting students, including Thomas, but the administration allowed 32 students, many of them beginners, to take the class and Kainen quit in frustration after one term. When Thomas began her advanced studies at American University in 1950, she was still a figurative painter. During the 1950s her style evolved in several major shifts, from figurative painting to cubism and then to abstract expressionism, with "monumental," dark paintings largely in blue and brown tones, to beginning to embrace the bright colors that she would later use in her signature style.

"Creative art is for all time and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged." Alma Thomas, 1970
Thomas would not become a full time, professional artist until she was 68 or 69 years old, in 1960, when she retired from teaching. Within twelve years after her first class at American, she began creating Color Field paintings, inspired by the work of the New York School and Abstract Expressionism. She stated, "The use of color in my paintings is of paramount importance to me. Through color I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness in my painting rather than on man's inhumanity to man." Speaking again about her use of color she said: "Color is life, and light is the mother of color." In 1963, she walked in the March on Washington with her friend, the opera singer Lillian Evans. Although Thomas was largely an apolitical artist, she portrayed the 1963 event in a 1964 painting. A detail from that painting became a 2005 U. S. postage stamp commemorating the March on Washington. Her first retrospective exhibit was in 1966 (April 24–May 17) at the Gallery of Art at Howard University, curated by art historian James A. Porter. It included 34 works from 1959 to 1966. For this exhibition, she created Earth Paintings, a series of nature inspired abstract works, including Resurrection (1966), which in 2014 would be bought for the White House collection. Between the years 1967 and 1975, Thomas received several awards and recognitions from various American art organizations and museums. In 1967, Thomas won an honorable mention in the American Austrian Society's painting exhibition with her painting The Viennese Waltzes, and later in 1972, at the age of 81, Thomas was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Later the same year, a much larger exhibition was also held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Thomas denied labels placed upon her as an artist and would not accept any barriers inhibiting her creative process and art career, including her identity as a black woman. She believed that the most important thing was for her to continue to create her visions through her own artwork and work in the art world despite racial segregation. Despite this, Thomas was still discriminated against as a black female artist and was critiqued for her abstract style as opposed to other Black Americans who worked with figuration and symbolism to fight oppression. Her works were featured alongside many other African American artists in galleries and shows, such as the first Black owned gallery in the District of Columbia. Many white critics complimented her as “the Signac of current color painters” and as “gifted, ebullient abstractionist”. Alma Thomas's philosophy of her own art is that her works are full of energy, and those energies cannot be destroyed or created. Joshua Taylor, director from 1970 to 1981 of the National Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum), also purchased some of her work, and wrote to Thomas in 1975, thanking her for a painting that hung in his living room: "It's like having Spring well before its appointed date." Mary Beth Edelson's Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) appropriated Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles; Alma Thomas was among those notable women artists. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement."

Thomas was, according to all evidence, never married. She told the New York Times in 1977 that she had "never married a man but my art. What man would have ever appreciated what I was up to?" She wrote, "Once upon a time it was said, don't die having a "Miss" on your tombstone. I feel very proud of having maintain[ed] my Miss. I say that Miss stand[s] for all the Jackasses I missed in life." She added, "A fine man is a delight, but for God sake don't get entangled with a Jackass." She had an active social life, with many artist friends. That home, now known as the Alma Thomas House, was built in about 1875 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978, in Howard University Hospital, following aortal surgery.

Alma Thomas' early work was representational in manner. After further education at American University and influenced by James V. Herring and Lois Mailou Jones, her work became more abstract. Her watercolor and oil paintings incorporated the use of (sometimes overlapping) colorful rectangles. She continued to use this technique, in works which explored colors found in trees, flowers, gardens, and other natural imagery. The Washington Post described her as "a force in the Washington Color School". Writing in 1998, art historian Sharon Patton described Thomas's 1973 Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto as "one of the most Minimalist Color Field paintings ever produced by an African American artist." Watusi (Hard Edge) was eventually removed from the White House due to concerns about the piece fitting into the space in Michelle Obama's East Wing office. Sky Light, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, hung in the Obama family private quarters. In 2015, another of her paintings, Resurrection (1966), was prominently hung in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, having been acquired for the White House collection in 2014 with $290,000 in funding from the White House Historical Association. It was "the first artwork by an African American woman to hang in the public spaces of the White House and enter the permanent collection." In 2016, the exhibition Alma Thomas, described in promotional materials as "the first comprehensive look at the artist’s work in nearly twenty years," and as presenting "a wide range of evolution of Thomas's work from the late 1950s to her death in 1978," was organized by The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and The Studio Museum in Harlem. This exhibition was curated by Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Tang Museum and Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem and supported by the Friends of the Tang. In 2019, Thomas's 1970 painting A Fantastic Sunset was auctioned at a Christie's sale. It sold for $2.655 million. In 2021, a new record price was set for Thomas's work when Alma's Flower Garden, painted in approximately 1968 to 1970, was deaccessioned by the Greenville County Museum of Art, which sold it in a private sale to an unidentified purchaser for $2.8 million. The museum had bought the painting in 2008 for $135,000. An exhibition of her art entitled "Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful," co organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia and the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, opened on July 9, 2021, at the Chrysler Museum. It is scheduled to run there to October 3, 2021, following which it will run at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D. C., in fall 2021, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville in spring 2022, and the Columbus Museum in summer 2022. In collaboration with the exhibition, a short documentary, "Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color" was commissioned. The film, directed by Cheri Gaulke, and produced by Jon Gann has played over 40 film festivals worldwide, and has won awards and accolades. In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940 1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Alma Thomas Teen Space at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library was named after her.