Kathleen Blackshear (1897–1988) was an American

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

artist known for her sensitive depictions of

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

subjects.

Early life and education

Kathleen Blackshear was born June 6, 1897, near the Texas Cotton Belt in a city called

Navasota Navasota is a city primarily in Grimes County, Texas, Grimes County, Texas, United States. The population was 7,643 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. In 2005, the Texas Legislature designated Navasota as the "Blues Capital of Texas ...

, Texas. She was the only child of Edward Duncan Blackshear and May (Terrell) Blackshear. She spent much of her youth on cotton plantations owned by members of both her mother's and father's families near the town of

. Her childhood friendships with the children of African-American field workers strongly influenced her later career. Blackshear graduated from Navasota High School in 1914 and showed an aptitude for art at an early age. After graduating high school, she attended

Baylor University Baylor University is a Private university, private Baptist research university in Waco, Texas, United States. It was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Te ...

, graduating with a bachelor's degree in modern languages in 1917, after which she went to New York to study at the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

. Her teachers at the ASL included

Solon Borglum Solon Hannibal de la Mothe Borglum (December 22, 1868 – January 31, 1922) was an American sculptor. He is most noted for his depiction of frontier life, and especially his experience with cowboys and native Americans. He was awarded the Croix ...

George Bridgman George Brant Bridgman (November 5, 1864 – December 16, 1943) was a Canadian-American Painting, painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New Yor ...

, and

Frank Vincent DuMond Frank Vincent DuMond (August 20, 1865 – February 6, 1951) was one of the most influential teacher-painters in 20th-century America. He was an illustrator and American Impressionism, American Impressionist painter of portraits and landscape ...

. She left New York in 1918 and spent the next six years traveling around Texas, California, and Europe and taking odd jobs, including hand-coloring films and designing film posters in Los Angeles. In 1924, Blackshear took up her art studies again, this time at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

(SAIC), where she studied with John Norton, Charles Fabens Kelley, William Owen, and art historian Helen Gardner who throughout her time at SAIC became a lifelong friend. She studied painting and graphic arts and later received her master's degree from SAIC in 1940.

Teaching and illustration work

In 1926, Blackshear began teaching art history and studio courses at SAIC to help support herself and continued to do so until retiring in 1961. She was known for mentoring African-American artists, including Margaret Burroughs, and for introducing her students to African and Asian art through field trips to local collections. While at SAIC, Blackshear supplied the analytical drawings for two of Helen Gardner's books, '' Art Through the Ages'' (1926)—one of the earliest American art history textbooks to incorporate non-Western art—and ''Understanding the Arts'' (1932). She also supplied illustrations for

Katharine Kuh Katharine Kuh (''née'' Woolf; 1904–1994) was an art historian, curator, critic, and dealer from Chicago, Illinois. She was the first woman curator of European art and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. Life Katharine Woolf was born o ...

's ''Art Has Many Faces'' (1951). Through their shared interest in non-Western art, Blackshear and Gardner have been credited with being key influences on the distinctive style of postwar Chicago artists.

Art career

Influenced by various strains of

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

including

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 ...

and

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

, Blackshear developed a range of styles with bold, simplified forms and rhythmic or patterned elements often featuring strong diagonals and tilted planes. Her paintings are reminiscent of Regionalists such as Thomas Hart Benton and modernists like

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

, while her whimsical abstract drawings evoke

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

. During the height of her career, between 1924 and 1940, African Americans were the central subjects of her work, and she became known for depicting them with warmth and clarity but without sentimentality. In 1939, critic C. J. Bulliet called her "Chicago’s most sympathetic, most understanding painter of the American Negro." Blackshear also made two

diorama A diorama is a replica of a scene, typically a three-dimensional model either full-sized or miniature. Sometimes dioramas are enclosed in a glass showcase at a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies like mili ...

s for the 1933

Century of Progress A Century of Progress International Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in the city of Chicago, Illinois, United States, from 1933 to 1934. The fair, registered under the Bureau International des Exposit ...

Exposition in Chicago. During her lifetime, Blackshear exhibited her work at regional museums such as the

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the

Delgado Museum of Art The New Orleans Museum of Art (or NOMA) is the oldest fine arts museum in the city of New Orleans. It is situated within City Park, a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, and near the terminus of the ...

(New Orleans, LA). She had her first solo museum show in 1941 at the

Witte Museum The Witte Museum ( ) is a museum located in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas, and was established in 1926. It is dedicated to telling the stories of Texas, from prehistory to the present. The permanent collection features historic artifac ...

in San Antonio, TX.

Personal life

Although she lived in Chicago, Blackshear kept a studio in Houston and often spent the summer in Navasota. Blackshear's life companion was the artist Ethel Spears, whom she probably met at SAIC and who died in 1974. Blackshear died October 14, 1988, in Navasota.

Legacy

Blackshear's work is in the collections of the Modern Art Museum (Fort Worth, TX), the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other institutions. Blackshear was the subject of a 1990 retrospective at SAIC entitled "A Tribute to Kathleen Blackshear." Her papers and those of Ethel Spears are held by the Smithsonian Institution's

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

in Washington, D.C.

References

External links

Kathleen Blackshear and Ethel Spears Papers, 1920–1990
(finding aid) {{DEFAULTSORT:Blackshear, Kathleen 1897 births 1988 deaths Painters from Texas Baylor University alumni School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni 20th-century American painters People from Navasota, Texas 20th-century American women painters