Lenox Avenue
Sargent Claude Johnson American
Publisher WPA
Not on view
San Francisco Bay Area–artist Johnson was a sculptor of international renown. He also experimented with lithography, gaining access to Work Projects Administration (WPA)-operated printmaking facilities through his role as unit supervisor of the WPA sculpture division. Though his sculptures and prints are markedly different, the process of creating a lithograph by drawing on the surface of limestone has affinities with that of carving and sculpting. Lenox Avenue evinces Johnson’s engagement with abstraction while retaining referential figuration. Of his subjects, Johnson said, "It is the pure American Negro I am concerned with, aiming to show the natural beauty and dignity in that characteristic lip and that characteristic hair, bearing and manner; and I wish to show that beauty not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself."
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