"Elton Fax" (October 9,1909-March 13,1993)

The son of Mark Oakland and Willie Estele Fax in Baltimore,Maryland. Elton initially matriculated at the historically black institution Claflin University,in Orangeburgh,South Carolina,but completed his studies and received a BFA at Syracuse University in Syracuse,New York, in 1931. On March 12 1929, Elton married Grace Elizabeth Turner, and their union produced three children. In 1934 Elton painted a well-received mural, comissioned by the Public Works of Art Projects (PWAP) at Baltimore's Dunbar High School,depicting the incorporation of southern, black agrarians into the urban,industrial north.His representation of the Great Migration and a pluralistic American workforce was an ideal example of the American Social-Realist art that was supported byFranklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal projects.Social Realism was a popular style in the 1930s and 1940s which later came to be identified with Communist aesthetics,but was originally perceived to be an appropriate aesthetic statement for the art of the working classes.From 1935 to 1936 Elton was an instructor in art,art history, and history at Clafin University.By the fall of 1936,he taught drawing at the Harlem Arts Center in New York City;he continued to work there until 1941,while his salary was paid in part by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).Elton was also Elton was also instrumental in the selection of the Baltimore Museum of Art as the site for the "Contemporary Negro Artists"exhibition of 1939,organized by Mary Beattie Brady of the William E. Harmon Foundation and philosopher and the cultural critic Alain Locke.By 1940 Elton had begun to work as a freelance artist,creating illustrations for magazines and children's books.The latter market would later prove significant to his career.During the 1940s he developed a popular weekly cartoon strip entitled Susabelle,which concentrated upon issues in African Americans history and appeared in several black newspaper.Elton also began to develop a signature form of presenttation described as the "chalk-talk."During his lectures often about his own travels and interactions-he would create works of art pretaining to the lecture subjects, using spontaneous drawings.In the late 1940s and early 1950s he returned to Orangeburgh in order to complete a number of significant portrait commissions for prominent,middle-class African Americans in the community.He produced a variety of artistics works demonstrating a range of approaches,generally within the strictures of representational art.His earlier works as a skilled portrait artists are exemplifed by such images as his Porttrait of Robert Shaw Wilkinson,(the second president of South Carolina State College,now South Carolina State University).He also painted President Wilkinsons wife's likeness,captured in the portrait,Marion Birney Wilkinson.The Wilkinson were both prominent members of South Carolina's black middle-class elite. These elegant,naturalistic portraits demonstrate  Elton firm handling European and European American aristocratic portraiture.Elton perhaps better known for his representations of the poor and disenfranchised.Many of his works were inspired by what he witnessed during a lifetime of international travel.He was interested in exposing exploitation:he hoped that his Social-Realist art would encouraged audiences to consider the global human condition,and he also wanted to enhance awareness of world poverty and human rights issues. In 1953 Elton and his his family moved to Mexico.During this period (1953-1956)he traveled extensively,visiting Argentina,Bolivia,Uruguay, and various other South and Central American nations.Upon returning to the United States,he was employed from 1957 to 1958 by the City College of New York (now part of the City University of New York)as a teacher of watercolor painting and art history. As a result of his empathetic representations of the poor and disenfranchised in the developing world,Elton was invited to attend the seminal conference of the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) held in Rome in 1959.His association with Amsac culminated in a tour of Africa documented in his first publication as both author and illustrator entitled,West African Vignettes,published by AMSAC IN 1960 and subsequently expanded in a new edition in 1963.The formula of writing illustrating his international experiences,became a successful approach for Elton.In the 1960s and continuing into succeeding decades he traveled to various parts of the world,offering his significantly,Elton was also confronted challenging Sudan and Ethiopia.He also confronted challenging environments in developed such as the former Soviet Union during the height of the cold war,often discussing potentially volatile subjects such as the struggle for civil rights in America.Despite the precariously political character of his subject matter,Elton maintained a supportive relationship with government observers of his presentations.Beginning in the 1970s Elton addressed the creation of publications pertaining to issues of African American history in the United States. Among these,one of his best-known and most popular works is a biography of Marcus Garvey.Elton work helped to reclaim Marcus from the obscurity to which he was consigned in the 1940s through the 1960s- an obscurity perhaps brought on by the financial scandal and dissolution of his once-powerful organization,the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).This scandal had culminated in Marcus imprisonment and eventual deportation from the United States.Elton biography of Marcus played an important role in redeeming Marcus reputation. The 1970s were a highly productive decade for Elton,who produced a number of books, including Contemporary Black Leaders (1970),and Seventeen Black Artist (1971).During this era he traveled throughout Asia as a guest of the Soviet Writers'Union in 1971 and again in 1973;in addition to these travels,he completed Garvey:The Story of a Pioneer Black Nationalist (1972),Through Black Eyes:Journeys of a Black Artist in East Africa and Russia,which he illustrated (1974),and Black Artist of the New Generation (1977).Throughout the 1980s he continued to publish and illustrate works, including Hashar (1980),a book based on his travels in the Central Asian states of the former USSR IN 1978.He also participated in the Bulgarian Writers' Conference in 1977 and in 1982,where he shared the dais with celebrated American authors such as John Cheever and Gore Vidal.Another work that he illustrated himself,Elyuchin (1983),was followed by Soviet People as i Knew Them (1988).In his 1986 article for the Black American Literature Forum,"It's Been a Beautiful but Rugged Journey,"he discussed his discomfort with American government requests that he report on his observations of potentially dangerous Communists influences in the countries he visited.This did not,curtail his travels;his last project,with Glennettee Tilley Turner,was creating the was creating the illustrations for take a Walk in Their Shoes (1989),a project paying homage to fourteen African Americans who overcame struggle,controversy or difficulty in their lives, to achieve success and transform our global community.