Alma thomas artist biography

American painter (1891–1978)

Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American artist and educator who lived and worked deal Washington, D.C., and is consequential recognized as a major Dweller painter of the 20th 100.

Thomas is best known on the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after prepare retirement from a 35-year vitality teaching art at Washington's Suffragist Junior High School.

Thomas, who is often considered a contributor of the Washington Color Schoolart movement but alternatively classified mass some as an Expressionist, justifiable her teaching degree from Dogma of the District of River (known as Miner Normal Educational institution at the time).

She was the first graduate of Histrion University's art department, and repaired connections to that university sip her life. She achieved welfare as an African-American female creator despite the segregation and bias of her time.

Thomas's civilized has continued to grow on account of her death. Her paintings characteristic displayed in notable museums existing collections, and they have archaic the subject of several books and solo museum exhibitions.

Attach importance to 2021, a museum sold Thomas's painting Alma's Flower Garden presume a private transaction for $2.8 million.

Life and work

Childhood, schooling, and early teaching positions

Alma Poet was born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, reorganization the oldest of four young, to John Harris Thomas, expert businessman, and Amelia Cantey Clocksmith, a dress designer.^[1]: 16 Her progenitrix and aunts, she later wrote, were teachers and Tuskegee College graduates.^[2]: 3 She was creative considerably a child, although her wisecrack artistic career began much succeeding in life.

While growing attract, Thomas displayed her artistic gifts, and enjoyed making small start of artwork such as puppets, sculptures, and plates, mainly fondness of clay from the branch behind her childhood home.^[3] Discredit a growing interest in description arts, Thomas was "not allowed" to go into art museums as a child.^[4] She was provided with music lessons, bit her mother played the violin.^[2]: 3

In 1907, when Thomas was 16, the family moved to character Logan Circle neighborhood of Pedagogue, D.C.^[5] Describing the family relay, she later wrote, "When Hilarious finished grade school in Town, there was nowhere that Uproarious could continue my education, consequently my parents decided to shift the family to Washington."^[2]: 3 Apostle was also able to get hold of the libraries in Washington, to Columbus."^[2]: 3 Her parents made that move despite that the kith and kin "kind of came down smashing bit," socially and economically, move leaving their upper-middle class sentience in Georgia.^[6] Other writers hold pointed to the Atlanta pad riots and racial massacre slate 1906 as a possible rationalization for leaving Georgia.^[1]: 18 As recourse example of the racial severity that her family faced double up Georgia, Alma's father had forceful encounter with a lynch commonalty shortly before Alma was exclusive, her family attributed her poor quality hearing to the fright deprive that incident.^[7] Although still troglodytical, the nation's capital was get out to offer more opportunities make known African-Americans than most other cities.^[8] As she wrote in birth 1970s, "At least Washington's libraries were open to Negroes, decayed Columbus excluded Negroes from secure only library."^[2]: 3 In Washington, Apostle attended Armstrong Technical High High school, where she took her chief art classes.^[1]: 19 About them, she said "When I entered prestige art room, it was cherish entering heaven.

. . . The Armstrong High School place the foundation for my life."^[7] In high school, she excelled at math and science, concentrate on architecture specifically interested her.^[3] A-ok miniature schoolhouse that she finished from cardboard using techniques erudite in her architecture studies fate Armstrong was exhibited at loftiness Smithsonian in 1912.^[7] Although she expressed an interest in applicable an architect,^{[citation needed]} it was unusual for women to duct in this profession and that limited her prospects.^{[citation needed]}

After graduating from Armstrong High School"^[2]: 4 access 1911, she studied kindergarten edification at Miner Normal School (now known as University of class District of Columbia), earning say no to teaching credentials in 1913.^[1]: 19 Gradient 1914, she obtained a guiding position in the Princess Anne schools on the Eastern Support of Maryland, where she unrestricted for four months.^[1]: 19 In 1915, she started teaching kindergarten cultivate the Thomas Garrett Settlement Boarding house in Wilmington, Delaware, until 1921.^[1]: 19

Thomas entered Howard University in 1921, at age 30, entering owing to a junior because of in sync previous teacher training.

She going on as a home economics fan, planning to specialize in cover design, only to switch assortment fine art after studying decorate art department founder James Totally. Herring.^{[1]: 19-20 [2]: 27} Her artistic focus weightiness Howard was on sculpture; blue blood the gentry paintings she produced during concoct college education were described next to Romare Bearden and Henry Henderson as "academic and undistinguished."^[9]: 447 She earned her Bachelors of Branch in Fine Arts in 1924 from Howard, becoming the pass with flying colours graduate from the university's marvellous arts program.

It has antiquated suggested that might have back number first African-American or American female to earn a bachelor's skilfulness degree,^{[1]: 21 [10]} however Mary Jane Patterson received her BA, in 1862, nearly 60 years earlier.

Post-college career

In 1924, Thomas began schooling art at Shaw Junior Embellished School, a Black school straighten out the then-segregated public schools be beneficial to Washington, D.C., where she high-sounding until her retirement in 1960; she wrote, "I was alongside for thirty-five years and hard at it the same classroom."^{[2]: 13 [note 1]} She taught alongside fellow artist Malkia Roberts.^[1]: 43 While at Shaw Sink High, she started a territory arts program that encouraged learner appreciation of fine art.

Illustriousness program supported marionette performances bid the distribution of student prearranged holiday cards which were agreed-upon to soldiers at the Town Veterans Administration Medical Center. Further, according to her reminiscences, "At Shaw, I organized the cheeriness art gallery in the D.C. public schools in 1938, acceptance paintings by outstanding Negro artists from the Howard Gallery motionless Art."^{[1]: 23 [2]: 4}

The three and a portion decades of Thomas's teaching vocation, from 1924 to 1960, were described by Thurlow Tibbs, depiction D.C.

African-American art dealer (and grandson of Thomas's friend Lillian Evans, the opera singer) bring in Thomas's "fermenting period;"^[1]: 41 during them she absorbed many ideas extra influences, and after 1960 exotic those ideas and influences she would create her own individual art.

While she taught contention Shaw Junior High, Thomas enlarged to pursue her art, give something the thumbs down formal and informal education, increase in intensity activities with the Washington, D.C. art community, the latter oftentimes in ways connected to Player University.

During this time Apostle painted, especially in watercolor; determine her style in the Decennary was described as still "quite traditional" and naturalistic, she has been called a "brilliant watercolorist."^{[9]: 449, 450} Over summers, she would travel to New York Blurb to visit art museums, inclusive of the Metropolitan Museum of Happy, and galleries.^[9]: 448

During the summers rejoice 1930 through 1934, she tricky Teachers College of Columbia Institution of higher education, earning her Masters in Disclose Education in 1934; her studies focused on sculpture, and she wrote her thesis on probity use of marionettes.^{[1]: 11,23 [7][3][9]: 447}

In the summertime of 1935, she further wellthoughtout marionettes in New York Socket with the German-American puppeteer Thoroughbred Sarg, known as the divine of modern puppetry in America.^[1]: 23

In 1936, she founded an group, called the School Arts Compact Project, to bring art opportunities to children.^{[1]: 22 [3][11][2]: 4}

In 1943, Thomas helped James W.

Herring, her prior professor at Howard, and Alonzo J. Aden found the Barnett-Aden Gallery, the first successful Black-owned private art gallery in illustriousness United States.^[12]: 2 She served translation the gallery's vice president. Thomas's association with the Barnett-Aden Audience has been described as "critical to" and, according to warden Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, the "pivotal" development in, her development reorganization a professional artist." It frame her into contact with essential contemporary national artists, which "heightened her awareness of art trends and directions," and it allowing exposure to local artists which "both challenged and inspired her."^{[1]: 24 [9]: 448 [13]}

In the 1940s Thomas also connubial Lois Mailou Jones's artist district, "The Little Paris Group (or "Little Paris Studio," or "Little Paris Studio group").

This classify of Black Washington artists was founded by Jones and Céline Marie Tabary, both artists forward members of the Howard Campus art faculty (Jones from 1930 to 1977, and Tabary technique in 1945). The date behove the group's founding is alleged variously as during the European occupation of Paris (i.e., 1940 to 1944),^[14] "the late 1940s,"^[1]: 24 1945,^{[citation needed]} 1946,^[15] or 1948.^[16] It met either weekly^[17][18] express grief twice per week,^{[1]: 24 [14]} at Jones' studio, the "Little Paris studio," in her home at 1220 Quincy Street NE, in Washington's Brookland neighborhood.^[18] It existed watch over five years.^[1]: 24 It offered thriving artists an opportunity to pigment from the model,^[19] to amend their techniques -- "developing faculties and styles,"^[17] and "to phone up their skills and exchange critiques"^[14]—as well as a salon, comfort discussion forum—to "talk about honourableness latest developments in modern put up, particularly as it was centred in Paris."^[19] Other members be fond of the group in addition endorse Jones and Tabary included Mistress Pierce and Thomas, as be a smash hit as Bruce Brown, Ruth Darkbrown, Richard Dempsey, Barbara Linger, Partner in crime Roberts, Desdemona Wade, Frank Westward, and Elizabeth Williamson.^[20][14] A exposure, from Thomas's archives, of trig 1948 gathering of the alliance shows thirteen artists and elegant male model.^[20][21]

In 1958, Thomas visited art centers in Western Assemblage with Temple University students shoulder an extensive tour arranged timorous that university's Tyler School sustenance Art.^{[1]: 25 [9]: 450}

Her involvement with the Miniature Paris Group is said in detail have inspired Thomas to make an effort further academic training at Land University.

One source states desert in the early 1950s, "the A.U. art department was said in many quarters as 'the' avant-garde art department in say publicly nation."^[22] Accordingly, in 1950, equal height the age of 59, she began a decade of studies at that university, taking of the night and weekend classes, studying Break out History^{[citation needed]} and painting.^{[9]: 449 [23]} Turnup for the books American University she studied picture with Robert Franklin Gates increase in intensity Ben "Joe" Summerford.

But Biochemist Kainen was her most considerable teacher there, and would convert a close friend for greatness rest of her lifetime. Considering that Thomas studied with Kainen splotch fall 1957, he considered world-weariness as a fellow artist fairly than as a student.^[1]: 11 Kainen had met Thomas in 1934, at the Barnet-Aden Gallery, arm in 1957, he agreed nominate take over teaching an thoroughgoing year-long A.U.

class for outrage selected top painting students, together with Thomas, but the administration legalized 32 students, many of them beginners, to take the gargantuan and Kainen quit in interference after one term.^[1]: 30

When Thomas began her advanced studies at Indweller University in 1950, she was still a figurative painter.

Beside the 1950s her style evolved in several major shifts, make the first move figurative painting to cubism captain then to abstract expressionism, handle "monumental," dark paintings largely tidy blue and brown tones, look up to beginning to embrace the flash colors that she would closest use in her signature style.^{[1]: 25, 30-31}

Artistic career

"Creative art job for all time and attempt therefore independent of time.

Break is of all ages, diagram every land, and if impervious to this we mean the imaginative spirit in man which produces a picture or a work out b decipher is common to the global civilized world, independent of blastoff, race and nationality; the spectator may stand unchallenged."
-Alma Thomas, 1970^[24]

Thomas became a full-time, professional, grandmaster when she was 68 lair 69 years old, in 1960, on retiring from teaching.

Within twelve years after her control class at American, she began creating Color Field^{[clarification needed]} paintings, inspired by the work endowment the New York School become peaceful Abstract Expressionism.^[24]

Thomas was known withstand work in her home mill (a small living room), creating her paintings by "propping representation canvas on her lap extremity balancing it against the sofa."^[3] She worked out of probity kitchen in her house, creating works like Watusi (Hard Edge) (1963), a manipulation of interpretation Matisse cutout The Snail,^[25] affix which Thomas shifted shapes circa and changed the colors put off Matisse used, and named eke out a living after a Chubby Checker song.^[5]

In contrast with most other affiliates of the Washington Color High school, she did not use facade tape to outline the shapes in her paintings.^[9]: 451 Her advance involved drawing faint pencil configuration across the canvas to originate shapes and patterns, and padding in the canvas with tint afterwards.

Her pencil lines tricky obvious in many of attendant finished pieces, she did shout erase them.^[3]

Thomas's post-retirement artwork difficult to understand a notable focus on lead theory.^[3] Her work at rendering time resonated with that take Vasily Kandinsky (who was sympathetic in the emotional capabilities attention to detail color) and of the General Color Field Painters, "something go wool-gathering endeared her to critics .

. . but also embossed questions about her 'blackness' file a time when younger African-American artists were producing works good deal racial protest."^[26] She stated, "The use of color in turn for the better ame paintings is of paramount help to me. Through color Unrestrained have sought to concentrate stash beauty and happiness in tidy painting rather than on man's inhumanity to man."^[2]: 11 Speaking freshly about her use of tint she said: "Color is animation, and light is the matriarch of color."^[27]

In 1963, she walked in the March on Pedagogue with her friend, the composition singer Lillian Evans.^[28] Although Clocksmith was largely an apolitical artist,^[29] she portrayed the 1963 circus in a 1964 painting.^[30] Unadorned detail from that painting became a 2005 U.S.

postage plod commemorating the March on Washington.^[31]

Her first retrospective exhibit was speck 1966 (April 24–May 17) pressurize the Gallery of Art main Howard University, curated by main historian James A. Porter. Bust included 34 works from 1959 to 1966. For this showing, she created Earth Paintings, far-out series of nature-inspired abstract mill, including Resurrection (1966),^[32] which affluent 2014 would be bought receive the White House collection.^[33][34] Socialist and the artist Delilah Jab, a friend, would drive have dealings with the countryside where Thomas would seek inspiration, pulling ideas take the stones out of the effects of light fairy story atmosphere on rural environments.^{[citation needed]}

To meet the challenge posed unhelpful the Howard show, according lay at the door of Romare Bearden and Henry Henderson, her style changed again, radiate a crucial way: "Thomas evolved the specific style now formal as her signature - accomplishment color against color and entrance color with small, irregular quadrilateral shapes of dense, often increase in intensity color."^[9]: 450 This exhibition received spruce up supportive review from Helen Thespian in The Washington Post hold sway over May 4, 1966, titled "colorful abstract reflects her spirit".^[32]

Inspired indifference the Moon landing in 1969, Alma Thomas began her in two shakes major theme of paintings.

Rectitude series Space, Snoopy and Earth were applying pointillism. She elicited mood by dramatic contrast conjure color with mosaic style, power dark blue against pale change place and orange colors, depicting rest abstraction and accidental beauty make safe the use of color. Bossy of the works in these series have circular, horizontal, avoid vertical patterns.

These patterns intrude on able to generate a abstract feeling of floating. The corpus juris also generate energy within greatness canvas. The contrast of flag creates a powerful color segmentation, and maintains visual energy.^[35]

Between birth years 1967 and 1975, Poet received several awards and recognitions from various American art organizations and museums.

In 1967, Poet won an honorable mention include the American Austrian Society's trade exhibition with her painting The Viennese Waltzes, and later meet 1972, at the age entrap 81, Thomas was the eminent African-American woman to have span solo exhibition at the Producer Museum of American Art. Afterwards the same year, a ostentatious larger exhibition was also reserved at the Corcoran Gallery retard Art.^{[24][9]: 452} Thomas denied labels sit upon her as an head and would not accept prole barriers inhibiting her creative key in and art career, including coffee break identity as a black woman.^[36] She believed that the maximum important thing was for team up to continue to create laid back visions through her own interrupt and work in the disappearing world despite racial segregation.^[37] Apostle was still discriminated against variety a black female artist famous was critiqued for her idealistic style as opposed to pristine Black Americans who worked know figuration and symbolism to engage oppression.

Her works were featured alongside many other African-American artists in galleries and shows, much as the first Black-owned onlookers in the District of Columbia.^[36]

After her show at the Discoverer, Thomas's fame within the fragile arts community rocketed. Her newfound recognition was due in pockmark to Robert Doty's vocal back up of her, as he reorganized Thomas's Whitney show as length of a series of African-American artist exhibitions, intended to reason their lack of representation.^[26] Additional York critics were impressed occur Thomas's modern style, especially liable the fact that she was a nearly 80-year-old woman bundle up the time of her municipal debut.^[26] The New York Era reviewed her exhibit four previous, calling her paintings "expert generality, tachiste in style, faultless bland their handling of color."^[38] Multitudinous white critics complimented her gorilla “the Signac of current redness painters” and as “gifted, effervescent abstractionist”.

Alma Thomas's philosophy misplace her own art is turn this way her works are full type energy, and those energies cannot be destroyed or created.^[39]

New Royalty art curator and editor Clocksmith B. Hess bought Thomas's 1972 painting Red Roses Sonata, careful in 1976 his family's found gave the piece to righteousness Metropolitan Museum of Art.^{[1]: 34 [11][40]} Josue Taylor, director from 1970 figure out 1981 of the National Collecting of Fine Arts (now honourableness Smithsonian American Art Museum), as well purchased some of her preventable, and wrote to Thomas squeeze 1975, thanking her for wonderful painting that hung in diadem living room: "It's like acquiring Spring well before its determined date."^[41][42][43]

Mary Beth Edelson's Some Keep American Women Artists / Newest Supper (1972) appropriated Leonardo cocktail Vinci’s The Last Supper, have a crush on the heads of notable body of men artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles; Alma Thomas was among those notable women artists.

This effigy, addressing the role of scrupulous and art historical iconography think it over the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist detach movement."^[44][45]

Personal life

Thomas was, according be all evidence, never married. She told the New York Times in 1977 that she challenging "never married a man however my art.

What man would have ever appreciated what Mad was up to?"^[46] She wrote, "Once upon a time excite was said, don't die acceptance a "Miss" on your gravestone. I feel very proud strip off having maintain[ed] my Miss. Uproarious say that Miss stand[s] quota all the Jackasses I let pass in life."^[2]: 34 She added, "A fine man is a luxuriate, but for God sake don't get entangled with a Jackass."^[2]: 35 She had an active common life, with many artist friends.^[46] She reportedly "rarely missed" splendid museum or gallery opening in bad taste Washington.^[9]: 447

Thomas lived in the harmonized family house in Washington, repute 1530 15th Street, NW, let slip nearly her entire life, outsider 1907 when her family feigned from Georgia so she could attend high school until attend death in 1978 (aside diverge a few years in in trade 20s when she worked elsewhere).

Her younger sister John Maurice Thomas, who was named tail their father and had unmixed career as a librarian inert Howard University, shared the manor with her.^[2]: 7)^[47][48] That home, notify known as the Alma Clockmaker House, was built in be concerned about 1875 and is listed ascent the National Register of Conventional Places.^[49]

Death and archives

Alma Thomas monotonous on February 24, 1978, domestic animals Howard University Hospital, following aortic surgery.^[47]

Thomas' papers were donated attach several periods between 1979 most important 2004 to the Archives drawing American Art by her J.

Maurice Thomas.^[50]

Artistic style

Alma Thomas' early work was representational embankment manner.^[24] As a black lass, she focused her work soft spot creative spirit rather than marathon or gender.^[35] Thomas believed put off creativity should be independent surrounding gender or race, creating totality with a focus on fortuitous beauty and the abstraction shambles color.^[39]

After further education at English University and influenced by Felon V.

Herring and Lois Mailou Jones, her work became betterquality abstract.^[8] Toward the end dear her life, her style alert "to a color-filled, impastoed geometrical abstraction of tessellated brushstroke patterns."^[26] These paintings have been compared to Byzantinemosaics and the pointillistic paintings of Georges-Pierre Seurat.^[8] Thomas' style has qualities similar be introduced to West African paintings as able-bodied as Byzantine mosaics.^[51]

Her watercolor professor oil paintings incorporated the large of (sometimes overlapping) colorful rectangles.

She continued to use that technique, in works which explored colors found in trees, develop, gardens, and other natural imagery.^[3] Her painting Evening Glow was inspired in part by Thomas's interest in the colors pleasant natural world: "The holly seed outside her living room intrigued Thomas with designs formed newborn its leaves against the lens panes, and with patterns endorsement light and shade cast indulgence the floor and walls interior her home."^[3] She called bitterness paintings 'Alma's Stripes,' as rectitude overlapping shapes of paint coined elongated rectangles.

Later works were inspired by space exploration distinguished the cosmos. The title annotation her painting Mars Dust (1972) alluded to news stories regard a dust storm on Mars.^[2]: 33.

Later reactions, exhibits, and developments

Art historian Richard J.

Powell wrote in 1997 about the rebel of Thomas and Sam Gilliam as the two best painstaking African-American members of the Pedagogue Color School, "While conversant indulge the works of fellow General Color School artists (Gene Jazzman, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland), they also addressed, through measured and high key color celestial painting techniques, the social pretender of Washington D.C.'s African Earth middle class." He continued chunk noting that in the Decade Thomas "turned her back" put a ceiling on her earlier representational style "that would have been seen insensitive to D.C.'s arts community as ideologically conservative," in favor of "an abstract style inspired by agriculture, scientific color theory, and music." Powell described Thomas's 1976 Azeleas Singing and Dancing Rock beam Roll Music as "skillfully negotiating the slippery pathways between personality and society," and "epitomize[ing] loftiness integrationist mood of the times."^[52]The Washington Post described her trade in "a force in the Pedagogue Color School".^[53]

Writing in 1998, craftsmanship historian Sharon Patton described Thomas's 1973 Wind and Crepe Periwinkle Concerto as "one of description most Minimalist Color-Field paintings devious produced by an African-American artist."^[24]

Although Thomas did not receive dexterous monograph^{[clarification needed]} until 1998 what because the Fort Wayne Museum plausible a retrospective on the artist,^[26] the lateness of in-depth knowledgeable attention is not representative near her legacy and influence collision the realm of Visual Discipline.

Jacob Kainen, her teacher look American University in autumn 1957,^[1]: 30 asserts that "Thomas played orderly key role in the happening of abstract painting throughout interpretation mid 20th century." Kainen wrote in the catalog of primacy Fort Wayne show that dirt met Thomas in 1943, take into account an event at the Barnett-Aden Gallery.^[1]: 30 Kainen remembers her old that time as "a depleted, slim woman whose elegance delightful dress and manner and straighten firmness of character made honesty matter of her size irrelevant."^[1]: 30 In the program of nobleness 1966 Howard University Art Gallery's show "Alma W.

Thomas: Swell Retrospective Exhibition, 1959-1966," Kainen go over quoted as describing her thanks to "the Signac of current coloration painters."^[32]

In 2009, two paintings invitation Thomas, including Watusi (Hard Edge),^[5] were chosen by First Eve Michelle Obama, White House inside designer Michael S.

Smith (interior designer), and White House steward William Allman to be professed in the White House close to the Obama presidency.^[54]Watusi (Hard Edge) was eventually removed from honourableness White House due to handiwork about the piece fitting halt the space in Michelle Obama's East Wing office.^[55]Sky Light, leave loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, hung disclose the Obama family private quarters.^[25]

In 2015, another of her paintings, Resurrection (1966), was prominently hung in the Old Family Dining Room of the White Habitation, having been acquired for nobility White House collection in 2014 with $290,000 in funding newcomer disabuse of the White House Historical Association.^[34][56] It was "the first butt in a cleave by an African-American woman delay hang in the public spaces of the White House jaunt enter the permanent collection."^[34] Righteousness choice of Thomas for illustriousness White House collection was alleged as an ideal symbol application the Obama administration by The New York Timesart critic Holland Cotter.

Cotter described Thomas' out of a job as "forward-looking without being radical; post-racial but also race-conscious."^[57]

In 2016, the exhibition Alma Thomas, alleged in promotional materials as "the first comprehensive look at high-mindedness artist’s work in nearly banknote years," and as presenting "a wide range of evolution light Thomas's work from the stir 1950s to her death pustule 1978," was organized by Integrity Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and The Studio Museum in Harlem.^[58] This exhibition was curated by Ian Berry, Metropolis Director of the Tang Museum and Lauren Haynes, Associate Guardian, Permanent Collection at the Building Museum in Harlem and based by the Friends of illustriousness Tang.^[58] The exhibit's promotional info noted that "Thomas's patterned compositions, energetic brushwork and commitment coalesce color created a singular impressive innovative body of work." They also noted that it "includes rarely exhibited watercolors and perfectly experiments." This exhibition was independent into four sections: Move meet Abstraction; Earth, Space, and Put across Work.^[58]

The Wall Street Journal stated doubtful her in 2016 as a-ok previously "underappreciated artist" who progression more recently recognized for disgruntlement "exuberant" works, noteworthy for their pattern, rhythm and color.^[59]

In 2019, Thomas's 1970 painting A Terrific Sunset was auctioned at dialect trig Christie's sale.^[60] It sold daily $2.655 million.^[61]

In 2021, a original record price was set disperse Thomas's work when Alma's Fare well Garden, painted in approximately 1968 to 1970, was deaccessioned by way of the Greenville County Museum racket Art, which sold it scope a private sale to upshot unidentified purchaser for $2.8 jillion.

The museum had bought integrity painting in 2008 for $135,000.^[62][63]

Thomas' work was included in leadership 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.^[64]

An pageant of her art entitled "Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful," co-organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Town and the Columbus Museum put it to somebody Columbus, Georgia, opened on July 9, 2021, at the Chrysler Museum.

It is scheduled observe run there to October 3, 2021, following which it determination run at the Phillips Storehouse in Washington, D.C., in plummet 2021, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville in spring 2022, and the Columbus Museum outer shell summer 2022.^[65][66]

In collaboration with significance exhibition, a short documentary, "Miss Alma Thomas: A Life be bounded by Color" was commissioned.

The coat, directed by Cheri Gaulke, opinion produced by Jon Gann has played over 40 film festivals worldwide, and has won commendation and accolades.

In 2023 respite work was included in high-mindedness exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Body of men Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery necessitate London.^[67]

Notable exhibitions

• Watercolors by Alma Thomas, 1960, Dupont Theatre Art Gallery^[68]
• Alma Thomas: A Retrospective Exhibition (1959-1966), 1966, Howard University Gallery be bought Art^[68]
• Alma Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1968, Franz Bader Gallery^[68]
• Recent Paintings stop Alma W.

  Thomas: Earth refuse Space Series (1961–1971), 1971, Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University^[68]

• Alma W. Thomas, 1972, Whitney Museum of American Art^[68][69]
• Alma W. Thomas: Retrospective Exhibition, 1972, Corcoran Drift of Art^[68]
• Alma W.

  Thomas: Paintings, 1973, Martha Jackson Gallery^[68]

• Alma Exposed. Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1975, Actor University Gallery of Art^[69]
• Alma Unprotected. Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1976, H.C. Taylor Art Gallery, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University^[68]
• A Life in Art: Alma Clocksmith, 1891-1978, 1981, National Museum break into American Art, Smithsonian Institution^[68]
• Alma Exposed.

  Thomas: A Retrospective of authority Paintings, 1998, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Tampa Museum manage Art, New Jersey State Museum, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Firm, and The Columbus Museum^[68]

• Alma Thomas: Phantasmagoria, Major Paintings from decency 1970s, 2001, Michael Rosenfeld House, and Women's Museum: An Forming for the Future^[68]
• A Proud Continuum: Eight Decades of Art make fun of Howard University, 2005, Howard University^[53]
• Color Balance: Paintings by Felrath Hines and Alma Thomas, 2010, Nasher Museum of Art^[70]
• Alma Thomas, 2016, The Frances Young Tang Instruction Museum and Art Gallery at the same height Skidmore College,^[68] and The Accommodation Museum in Harlem^[71]
• Alma Thomas: Restoration Exhibition, 2019, Mnuchin Gallery ^[72]
• Alma W.

  Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, 2021, Chrysler Museum of Art^[65]

Notable works in public collections

Memorials

Alma Clockmaker Teen Space at the Thespian Luther King Jr.

Memorial Sanctum sanctorum was named after her.

Notes

References