Berman and Stieglitz Galleries, Ground Floor
Main Building
This major retrospective, which includes some 60 prints and 30 drawings and watercolors, documents for the first time the artistic achievements of Dox Thrash, an important African American artist who rose to national prominence during the late 1930s.
Philadelphia Museum of Art staff members of the time, including director Fiske Kimball and Prints and Drawings curator Carl Zigrosser, took an active interest in the Workshop’s efforts. Spurred by their enthusiasm, the museum acquired 75 prints produced by African Americans for the WPA in the 1940s. Today, the museum houses 50 works by Thrash in its Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, acquired between 1941 and 1999.
While with the WPA, Thrash discovered that gritty carborundum crystals, normally employed to remove images from lithograph stones, could also be used on copper plates to make etchings. The process was quickly adopted and adapted by other members of the WPA workshop, but the compelling imagery and rich chiaroscuro of Thrash’s own carborundum prints have ensured that it is his name that is most closely linked with his innovative method.
This exhibition focuses on the WPA years and the 1940s and 1950s, when Thrash’s prints and drawings were shown in major cities across the United States. Drawn from public and private collections, the selected works exhibit the range of the artist's poetic imagery: childhood memories of the rural south, hard times in the urban north, patriotic war work, sensuous nude studies, as well as lively scenes of his community and its residents.
Itinerary
- Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago, Illinois: September–November 2002
