"Charles Wilbert White." [April 2,1918-October 3,1979]

He was born in Chicago,the sole child of Ethel Gary & Charles White

Sr.,a Creek Native America As a child he drew what was around him in Chicago neighborhood;dilapidated buildings and trash-strewn streets were subjects of his childhood drawings.His daddy, was a railroad and construction worker,died when Charles Jr,was just eight years old,and his mama remarried a man named Clifton Marsh.Clifton's alcohol abuse brought that marriage to an end after a few years,from then on it was just Charles and his mama,who was a domestic worker. Charles ran errands,shined shoes,cleaned houses,and swept stoops,to add to their fiances.The Great Depression was taking its toll on working families while social consciousness was beginning to awaken.Charles artistic indignation's became clear to his mother when,at age seven,he removed the window shades from one of homes she was working to use as a canvasses.She tried to replace paints,with a violin,but her influence did not take;he attended Chicago art lectures and classes whenever he could.His favorite artists at the time were Winslow Homer and George Innes,and he was also a voracious reader.At 14 Charles began working as a sign painter.His previously impressive academic record took a turn once he entered high school.His interest in school,Charles interest in school waned and after all the reading he had done,he was discouraged by the history he was learning in school.Nowhere in his history books were were African Americans depicted as proud of confident.Soon boredom and resentment led to truancy.Interestingly,Charles did not skip school to cause trouble--he often spent his schools days reading at the public library and wandering among the galleries of the Chicago Institute.He became involved with an informal group of young African American artists called the Arts and Crafts Guild that,through a series of fundraisers,earned enough to send one of its members to art school one night per week.That member would then come back to the group an retell all that he learned.While Charles was on academic probation at school,he excelled in his art classes.He had to remain in high school an extra year to make up his grades,he earned a year's scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago,where he studied after school.Charles worked as valet and cook and taught drawing classes to cover his expenses,and managed to finish his two year-year course of study in one year.Charles made his first lithograph at age 17.While at the art institute,fell in love with with the printing process."I've always been turned on by lithography,"he quoted as saying in a 1971 exhibiting catalog,"but there hasn't always been the opportunity to do it because of the physical difficulties involved.I haven't always had the availability of a press,but whenever I have had the opportunity,I've always been excited about lithographs."Charles joined the Works Project Administration and,in 1940,was commissioned to create a mural depicting the America Negro Press.In 1941,he married a well educated and accomplished Alice Elizabeth Catlett.Also that year,he earned a Rosenwald grant,which he used to tour the southern U.S.. "In this process of rediscovering America,the racial forms and subjects which hereto had been kept in the background of Negro art assumed a prominent place in the foreground,"Charles is quoted as saying in Image of Dignity."To the lasting benefit,I believe,of America art."On his trip he made a series of sketches that evolved into a 18-by-20-foot mural depicting African American history in the U.S. that took him nine months to complete.In 1944 Charles was drafted into the army,where he was assigned to paint camouflage.While he was stationed in Missiouri,hw dwveloped pleurisy and was hospitalized.He then was discovered to have tuberculosis,was given a medical discharge from the service and spent the next three years in a Veteran's Administration Hospital.Upon his release from the hospital,he and his wife settled in New York City.By 1947 Charles had his first one-man show there,which kindled a worldwide interest in his work."Charles White's work force and conviction,"a New York Times critic wrote."Something of the throbbing emotion of Negro spirtuals comes through.A restrained stylization of the big forms keeps them from being too overpowering.This is very moving work."In the ensuing years,collectors and museums in the U.S. and Europe acquired and exhibited many of his pieces.In the late 1930's Charles became aware of Mexican artists Diego Riviera,who was painting murals in the U.S. at the time.Controversial for his politics,Diego's mural depicting the struggles of the working class as well known."I found a strong affinity in terms of my goals as an artists and what they represented,"Charles said in the 1979,catalog."I  am concerned about my fellow man---with the survival of man---with the progress that man has made in relation to his fellow man,in relation to nature,in trying to find a more beautiful way of life."Charles traveled to Mexico in the late-1940's to make prints at the renowned graphics workshop Taller de Grafica in Mexico City.He stayed and worked I'm Mexico for two years,meeting the leading Mexican artists of the time,including Riviera.After a year-long Artists-in-residency at Howard University,he returned to New York for a lung operation and spent another year in the hospital.Charles and his wife then divorced,after which he suffered another physical breakdown and another chest surgery.After his recuperation Charles returned to work  and became involved with the New York Graphic Workshop,which was similar to Mexico's Taller de Grafica.He also became of the city's thriving African American intellectual community,and lived the same apartment building as W.E.B.Du Bois,Ralph Bunche,Thurgood Marshall,and Duke Ellington.New York City influenced Charles work as an adult as Chicago had in his youth.At the heart of Charles work was his need to explore the universal conflicts that plague all humankind.Human relationships,social or economic struggles,love and hate,justice and injustice,were among the themes of his work."I deal with ideas as an educator or a philosopher,"he quoted as saying in the 1971 exhibition catalog."This is my life's work,and i treat this responsibility," very seriously."Harry Beafonte commented in the foreword to Charles 1967 book,Images,of Dignity:"There is a powerful,sometimes violent in his artistic interpretation of Negro Americana.There is the poetic beauty of Negro idiom.This the artist's profound contribution,and its significant that his art has never strayed for afield from the roots which gave birth to the artist himself."As his work became more popular and more valuable,he began to notice a trend among his collectors that he had never attended--most of the people who bought his art were upper-or middle-class individuals or museums."The primary audience that I addressing myself to was really the masses of black people,"Charles said in the 1971 catalog,"and they were not turning out in hundreds to see my shows,and I had to find some way of reaching them,since my subject matter was related to them and should be made available to them...."To this end,Charles later published inexpensive portfolios of his work:Portfolio of Six Drawings--The Art of Charles White,Portfolio 10/Charles White,and Portfolio 6/Charles White.Charles met and married Frances Barrett,a social worker,in 1950.He was a member of the Committee on the Arts,whose members included Sidney Poitier & Harry Belafonte.Both entertainers would become serious collectors and champions of his work.He was enjoying critical and popular success in New York,Charles could not break all the boundaries of racism in America during the era.His work included in an exhibition of African American artists,at the University of Alabama,he was not allowed to attend.The Delgado Museum in New Orleans purchased one of his paintings,but denied the artist admission.Charles found his work very widely known throughout Europe on a 1951 trip there with Frances.He was received as a distinguished guest in France,England,Italy,Germany,Czechoslovakia,Poland,and the former

Soviet Union.Throughout Europe,Charles was amazed not only by how his work was celebrated,but how his skin color was not a concern as he moved freely through the streets.In 1952 the Whitney Museum purchased Charles's preacher for his permanent collection.The whites moved to California in 1956,and from then on he was known as a Los Angeles artists.Charles & Frances and their two adopted children lived at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Altadena,a Los Angeles suburd.They fill in love with the sunshine nature,and wide open spaces of California.He had several one-man shows in Los Angeles,and was represented by the Heritage Gallery There.In 1965 he began teaching at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles,and continued to teach there until his death.In 1966 Charles was commissioned to do Exodus II by Gemini G.E.L. gallery in Los Angeles.He was not as involved in California arts organizations as he had been in New York,instead focusing on his teaching and his work.Charles thrived on the energy of his students.He also was given to sitting on gallery floors,talking about art with visiting groups of school children who visited his shows.When asked why he only painted blacks,he responded,"I am a Negro in America,"in Images of Dignity."I releate to images that are meaningful to me,images that are close to me,I use that as a springboard to deal with the more broad and the more all-encompassing."