By DWIGHT DANA
FLORENCE N.C. — The trustees of the Florence Museum are holding a 110th birthday party for the late and noted artist William H. Johnson, a Florence native, Saturday at 2 p.m. on the lawn of the museum.
The trustees also will unveil their most recent acquisition at the party, which free and open to the public.
Never heard of William H. Johnson? Take a gander at some of the accomplishments of the 1918 graduate of Wilson High School:
He is featured prominently in every major American art history text.
He is considered one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century.
Florence is the only city in South Carolina that can boast of such an important native artist.
He could paint as beautifully and realistically as Rubens or Rembrandt, but he made a conscientious decision to paint with the simple, direct intensity of folk art in order to best document scenes of daily life of African-Americans.
His use of bright colors and large shapes, repeating lines, and patterns ultimately sparked a new movement in modern American painting.
He was celebrated as a major American artist in New York’s “Harlem Renaissance.”
He played an integral role in creating opportunities and acceptance for other black artists.
He was hugely successful in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Johnson’s work was strongly influenced by Van Gogh, Cezanne and Soutine.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has more work created by him than any other individual artist. It houses over 1,000 of Johnson’s works.
First lady Michelle Obama selected a William H. Johnson painting to hang in the White House.
But in recognizing and studying the work of William H. Johnson, the impression he leaves on children is the biggest deal of all.
Dr. Hunter Stokes is the chairman of the museum’s board of trustees. He became involved with Johnsonwhen he was serving on the state museum’s board of directors.
“Not many people have a 110th birthday party,” he said with a laugh. “William Johnson is probably the best known person to come out of Florence one of the three most outstanding black artists in the country. I’m looking forward to the party and hope we have a good turnout.”
Stokes said the acquisition that will be unveiled Saturday “is by far the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen” and among the top three he ever did.
Johnson recognized early that his aspirations were to become an artist. After graduating from Wilson High School in 1918, he moved to New York City, where he was admitted to the National Academy of Design, a prestigious art school. He excelled in painting, studying with noted artist Charles Webster Hawthorne.
Johnson graduated in 1926 and with private funds raised by Hawthorne he departed for France to further his studies.
Johnson met Danish artist Holcha Krake in 1926. She was skilled in weaving and ceramics. They were married in 1930 in Denmark and spent most of the 1930s in Scandinavia. Here Johnson’s interests in primitivism and folk art began to have a noticeable impact on his work.
Johnson returned to New York in 1938 and set up a studio in Harlem. His French-inspired European landscapes and portraits attracted the attention of the New York art world.
His fame soon spread when he received a Harmon Foundation gold medal. News of his award appeared in major newspapers across the country and even his hometown of Florence
He had visited Florence in the early 1930s. During this visit, Johnson was given the chance to exhibit his work for one day at the Florence YMCA.
Johnson’s search for home and heritage was grounded in his Southern roots. The South was the source of his deep-seated memories of endless fields of cotton and tobacco, one-room wooden shacks, rickety wagons pulled by powerful mules and oxen, and stoic, denim-clad farm workers.
Johnson’s paintings repositioned the standard folk narratives about rural people and the South along an incredibly modern style by using simplified, colorful forms.
Johnson’s first major solo exhibition in New York opened in May 1941 - the first time most of his African-American, folk-inspired paintings were shown. The exhibition was reviewed by the two major art journals and by all the large daily newspapers in New York.
Johnson said his personal philosophy “is to express in a natural way what I feel, what is in me, both rhythmically and spiritually, all that which in time has been saved up in my family of primitiveness and tradition, and which is now concentrated in me.”
Johnson’s wife died in 1944. He was hospitalized at the Long Island’s Central Islip State Hospital in the late 1940s. He spent 23 years there before his death in 1970.
The Florence Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m.The museum is located at 558 Spruce St. and the website is www.florencemuseum.org.
