John T. Biggers
| John T. Biggers | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
April 13, 1924 Gastonia, North Carolina |
| Died | January 25, 2001 (aged 76) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Lincoln Academy (Kings Mountain, North Carolina), Hampton Institute |
| Alma mater | Pennsylvania State University |
| Movement | Young Negro Art |
John Thomas Biggers (April 13, 1924 – January 25, 2001) was an African-American muralist who came to prominence after the Harlem Renaissance and toward the end of World War II. Biggers has worked on creating works critical of racial and economic injustice. He served as the founding chairman of the art department at Houston's Texas State University for Negroes (now Texas Southern University).
Biggers was born in a shotgun house built by his father in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father Paul was a Baptist preacher, farmer, shoemaker, schoolteacher, and principal of a three-room school. His mother Cora was a housekeeper for white families. The youngest of seven, Biggers was reared in a close family that valued creativity and education. When Cora's husband died in 1937, she took a job in an orphanage for Black children, and John and his brother Joe were sent to Lincoln Academy, an American Missionary Association school in Kings Mountain, North Carolina.
After graduating from Lincoln, Biggers attended Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). Biggers planned to become a plumber (his Hampton application included boiler room drawings), but his life took a dramatic change of course when he took an art class with Viktor Lowenfeld, a Jewish refugee who in 1939 fled from Nazi persecution in Austria before World War II. Lowenfield exposed his students to works by African Americans and was concerned with altering his students' perceptions toward their African heritage by introducing them to the religious and social context of African art, of which the Hampton Museum had a significant collection.
Afterward, Biggers began to study art. At Hampton, Biggers also studied under African-American painter Charles White and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett. There he was introduced to Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera and American regionalists Grant Wood, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, and Harry Sternberg. He was exposed to and influenced by the Harlem Renaissance artists William Artis and Hale Woodruf, and writers W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke.
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