Dorothy C.
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. Dorothy C 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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