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Hale Woodruff American (Illinois, 1900 - 1980) View objects by this artist.

Woodruff was born in Cairo, Illinois and raised in the Nashville, Tennessee, where he first used his artistic talent to create hand-drawn menus and cartoons. After graduation from high school, Woodruff made a trip to Indianapolis, where he visited an art exhibition at The John Herron Art Institute. He worked for two years to save money to attend Herron, enrolling in full-time day classes in 1920.
        Prior to attending Herron, Woodruff met William Edouard Scott, who had visited Tanner's home in France. Woodruff was excited by Scott's stories of Tanner and was determined to meet the master. At the height of the Harlem Renaissance in 1927, Woodruff made his trip abroad, funded in part by a Harmon Foundation award and sales of his Harmon Award-winning paintings. (From 1926 to 1933, The Harmon Foundation, which was located in New York City, presented annual awards to African Americans for distinguished achievement in the fine arts. The foundation played an important part in the Harlem Renaissance.)

        Woodruff's European works were in the cubist mode. The Card Players, about 1978 (originally painted in 1928-29), was inspired by Pablo Picasso's cubist style and Cézanne's Two Card Players, 1890-92. The two card players in Woodruff's painting represent his friends the poet Countee Cullen and the artist Palmer Hayden, who were with Woodruff in Paris. While in France, Woodruff met with Tanner, who critiqued his art. Although this was the only time Woodruff visited with Tanner, the master left a lasting impression on him.

        Woodruff's style changed when he returned to the U.S. in 1931. He accepted a position as the first art instructor at the Atlanta University Center where he began to show an interest in regionalism and social realism, the dominant styles of the Depression era. Almost half of Woodruff's career was spent in Atlanta where he painted several figure studies, including Cigarette Smoker and Sharecropper Boy. While in Atlanta, Woodruff initiated a national exhibition of works by black artists, which was held annually from 1942 to 1970 at Atlanta University.

        Woodruff also is known for mural painting. He spent the summer of 1936 in Mexico mixing colors and preparing walls for the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He was later commissioned to create murals, which are still intact, at Talladega College in Alabama and the Trevor Arnett Library at Clark Atlanta University. The Trevor Arnett Library murals, called The Art of the Negro (1950), were especially important in his artistic development because they examine the movement of African cultural contributions through the rest of the world. Woodruff's research and absorption of African cultural ideas became the foundation for much of his subsequent work, including such paintings as Carnival and Afro Emblems.

        In 1943, Woodruff received a Julius Rosenwald fellowship to paint in New York City. (This was the same fellowship that enabled William Edouard Scott to work in Haiti.) Woodruff worked in New York for two years. Shortly after his return to Atlanta University, Woodruff accepted a position at New York University. He soon came under the influence of abstract expressionism, and his style shifted to what he described as "semiabstract, symbolic painting." He continued to paint in an abstract manner for the rest of his life.

        Woodruff was a founding member of Spiral, a group of 16 African-American artists who joined together in New York City during the 1960s to explore their common cultural experiences as black artists. Woodruff proposed the name to suggest the group's need to reach out into broader circles.

        Woodruff was promoted to professor of education at New York University in 1957, and in 1967, the university honored him with a retrospective exhibition of his paintings. In 1968, he retired from the university and was named Professor Emeritus. In the spring of 1979, the Studio Museum in Harlem held a retrospective of Woodruff's art, covering 50 years of his work. He died in 1980 at the age of 80.

Source: A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans. Indianapolis Museum of Art

also available:
Oral history interview with Hale Woodruff
November 18, 1968
Interviewer: Al Murray
Smithsonian Archive of American Art
http://www.aaa.si.edu/oralhist/woodru68.htm


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