Aaron Douglas

Kansas-born Douglas came to New York in 1925 at the outset of the Harlem Renaissance. Intense engagement with other African-American artists, writers, and musicians influenced the development of his unique Modernist style, seen here in Building More Stately Mansions, a study for a larger work painted while Douglas was teaching at Fisk University in Tennessee. The painting symbolizes the labor of black men and women in the creation of great architectural monuments, silhouetting their active figures against a utopian background. Concentric bands of muted color suggest waves of history and knowledge, linking the builders of pyramids, temples, and churches to the constructors of skyscrapers in the present time and anticipating their future intellectual and artistic achievements.