Eldzier Cortor - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Eldzier Cortor is an African-American artist and printmaker. His work typically features elongated nude figures in intimate settings, influenced by both traditional African art

African art

African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...

and European surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

Life and career

Cortor was born in Tidewater, Virginia, to John and Ophelia Cortor. His family moved to Chicago when Cortor was about a year old, eventually settling in that city's South Side, where Cortor attended Englewood High School. Fellow students at Englewood included the African-American artists Charles Wilbert White

Charles Wilbert White

Charles Wilbert White was an American artist born in Chicago. He was known for his WPA era murals. White was married to famed sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett briefly...

and Margaret Burroughs. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

, gaining a degree in 1936. In 1940 he worked with the Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

(WPA), where he drew scenes of Depression-era Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. In 1949, Cortor studied in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, and Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

on a Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

, and taught at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The city's population was 704,776 as of the 2003 census, and was officially estimated to have reached 897,859 in 2009....

from 1949-1951. His papers are held in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

Works

Studying the African sculptures at an exhibit at the Field Museum

Field Museum of Natural History

The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...

transformed his work. "That was the most important influence in all my work, for to this day you will find in my handling of the human figure that clylindrical and lyrical quality I was taught... to appreciate in African art."

Cortor was one of the first African-American artists to make African-American women his dominant theme, explaining, "the Black woman represents the Black race, continuance of life." His treatment of women has been criticised, for instance in a 1985 article in Art, which described the figure in Southern Gate (1942–43) as, "Stripped of integrity and reduced to a mere object…" According to Adrienne Childs, Cortor’s Cuban Souvenir, "presents an exoctized black women whose red dress, red lips…evoke the stereotypical notion of the Latin female sexuality.” (Childs 1998: 122).

Mel Edwards

Mel Edwards

Mel Edwards is an American sculptor, based in New York City. He has had more than a dozen one-person show exhibits and been in over four dozen group shows. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the New Jersey...

mentions Cortor as an example of an African-American artist influenced by surrealism, "who often uses the female figure in a surreal interior and exterior environment."

Exhibitions and collections

Cortor exhibited in the 1938 interracial show "An Exhibition in Defense of Peace and Democracy", which was sponsored by the Chicago Artists' Group. In 1940 he was one of the young artists exhibited at "The Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro" in Chicago. He also contributed to the 1967 City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

exhibition "The Evolution of Afro-American Artists: 1800 - 1950". In 1976 his painting Interior was included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....

exhibition "Two Centuries of Black American Art", curated by David Driskell, which toured the U.S in 1977. The 1988 group exhibition "Three Masters", at New York's Kenkeleba Gallery, featured Cortor's work alongside that of Hughie Lee-Smith

Hughie Lee-Smith

Hughie Lee-Smith was an American artist and teacher whose signature works were slightly surreal in mood, often featuring distant figures seen under vast skies in desolate urban settings.-Life:...

and Archibald Motley

Archibald Motley

Archibald John Motley, Junior was an African-American painter. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918...

. Michael Brenson, in The New York Times review of the show, expressed a preference for Cortor's still-life paintings, rather than his paintings of people. The solo show "Eldzier Cortor: Master Printmaker" was exhibited at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute is a psychoanalytic research, training, education facility that is affiliated with the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association...

in 2002. In 2010 his works were included in an exhibition at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

, and a selection of his works on paper exhibited at the Indiana University Art Museum

Indiana University Art Museum

The Indiana University Art Museum is located on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Established in 1941, the museum currently holds several internationally acclaimed collections, ranging from ancient gold jewelry and African masks to paintings by Claude Monet...

.

His works are held in the collections of Howard University

Howard University

Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...

, the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...

and The Art Institute of Chicago.

External links

Articles

Matt Blacker, Black Spirit: Works on Paper by Eldzier Cortor, Indiana University, 2006.
Listing from Ask Art
Entry from negroartist.com

Paintings online

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