Albert Huie (31 December 1920 – 31 January 2010) was a

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

n painter.

Early life and education

Born in Falmouth, Trelawny Parish,

, Huie moved to Kingston when he was 16 years old;Jamaicans in the US Mourn Passing of Albert Huie
, Jamaican Information Service in the 1930s he became part of the "Institute Group" at the Institute of Jamaica, where he received his first formal training with Armenian artist Koren der Harootian.Albert Huie profile
at Art Encyclopedia, accessed via Answers.com In the early 1940s he worked as an assistant to Edna Manley while she taught at Kingston's Junior Centre. A British Council scholarship was awarded to Huie in 1947. Further study followed, in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and in

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at the Ontario College of Art, before his return to Jamaica.

Career

In 1950 he was one of the founding tutors of the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts. He exhibited around the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and Jamaica, and later in his career settled in the US. On National Heroes Day in 2009 he was honored by the Jamaican Embassy for his contributions to the Jamaican community in and around

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

As a painter, Huie was best known for his

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

and

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

work, though he often painted

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

s as well. Some of his pieces expressed sociopolitical and nationalist themes, and many of his early paintings related in some way to manual labor.Veerle Poupeye. ''Caribbean Art''. London; Thames and Hudson; 1998 His painting ''Miss Mahoghany'' caused controversy twice in his lifetime, first when it was unveiled in 1960 and again in 2000 when it was featured in Air Jamaica's ''Skywritings'' magazine which resulted in its removal. His later paintings showed the influence of

post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

, along with elements of

art deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

and Mexican

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

painting. He usually used

oils An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturat ...

, but sometimes used acrylics. His paintings hang in the National Gallery of Jamaica, among other collections.

Awards

In 1958 Huie was granted the Institute of Jamaica's Musgrave Silver Medal and in 1974 he was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal for his work by the Institute of Jamaica. In 1959 he was awarded the international award for painting at the Spanish Bi-Annual exhibition in Havana, Cuba. Huie received the Jamaican Government Award for the Best Painting in the annual National Exhibition in 1962.

Personal life

Huie's granddaughter is artist Lehna Huie. He died on 31 January 2010 in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...

, aged 89.

References

External links

Biography on Lusher Gallery archive of Jamaican artists

Artnet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Huie, Albert 1920 births 2010 deaths People from Trelawny Parish 20th-century Jamaican painters Artists from Baltimore Jamaican emigrants to the United States Recipients of the Musgrave Medal