"William Henry Johnson"(March 18,1901-1970)

Was an African American painter born in Florence, South Carolina, and is becoming more widely recognized as one of the greatest American artists of the 20th Century.As his style evolved from realism to expressionism to a powerful folk style.(for which he best known).his work always evokes transitory and sublime sensations,that have been often mimicked but never matched.Without question,he has widened the perimeter of how the Negro historical experience will be remembered and how it will defined in the future.In 1944 his wife, Holche Krake,a danish textile artist,died from breast cancer.To deal with his grief, he took in a Navy Yard,and in 1946 left for Denmark to be with his wife's family.He soon fell ill himself,from the effects of advanced syphilis,and returned to New York in 1947 to enter the Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island,where he spent the remainder of his life.He stopped painting in 1956 and died in 1970.Before his death he donated all of his work to the National Museum of American Art,now the Smithsonian American Art Museum.A Major exibition of his works,William H. Johnson's World on Paper,was organized and circulated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.The exhibition traveled to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.