Elizabeth Catlett was born in Washington D.C. in 1915. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Elizabeth attended Howard University and the University of Iowa where she began creating images of African American women and children. She is best known for her printmaking and sculpture of wood, ceramics, and stone. She spent most of her life teaching art in the US and in Mexico.
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Jacob Lawrence was born in New Jersey in 1917 and grew up in Harlem in New York City. He is best known for his narrative paintings where he would paint a series that told a story. The Migration Series tells the story of African American workers moving from the South to the North after WWI.
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Edmonia Lewis was born in New York in 1844. She was the first professional African American Sculptor. In 1865, she moved to Europe and studied stone carving in Rome with several other American artists including women. Her work was mostly portraits in stone that depicted some religious subjects as well as imagery from her Native American hertiage.
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Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977. He started taking art classes when he was 11 years old and attended the San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University. He is now one of the world's most well-known portrait painters and has recently been commissioned to paint President Obama's portrait for the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. He is known for his realistic portraits of African American men and women posing as the subjects of Old Masters paintings.
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Faith Ringold was born in 1930 in Harlem, New York City. Her family exposed her to art at an early age. She attended City College of New York and studied art education. While she created paintings and sculptures, she is best known for her quilts that told stories as well as her illustrated children's books.
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Charles McGee is a Detroit artist that was born in South Carolina in 1924. He moved to Detroit when he was 10 years old. After spending time in the Marine Corps, he returned to Detroit and took classes at the Society of Arts and Crafts (now CCS). He is best known for his abstract paintings, assemblages, and murals.
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