Kathleen Blackshear
| Kathleen Blackshear | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
June 6, 1897 Navasota, Texas |
| Died | October 14, 1988 (aged 91) Navasota, Texas |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | artist |
Kathleen Blackshear (1897–1988) was an American Modernist artist known for her sensitive depictions of African-American subjects.
Kathleen Blackshear was born June 6, 1897, in Texas, the only child of Edward Duncan Blackshear and May (Terrell) Blackshear. She spent much of her youth on cotton plantations owned by members of both her mother's and father's families near the town of Navasota. Her childhood friendships with the children of African-American field workers strongly influenced her later career.
Blackshear showed an early aptitude for art. She first attended Baylor University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in modern languages in 1917, after which she went to New York to study at the Art Students League. Her teachers at the ASL included Solon Borglum, George Bridgman, and Frank Vincent DuMond. She left New York in 1918 and spent the next six years traveling around Texas, California, and Europe and taking odd jobs, including hand-coloring films and designing film posters in Los Angeles.
In 1924, Blackshear took up her art studies again, this time at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where art historian Helen Gardner became a mentor and lifelong friend. She later (1940) got her master's degree from SAIC.
In 1926, Blackshear began teaching art history and studio courses at SAIC to help support herself and continued to do so until retiring in 1961. She was known for mentoring African-American artists, including Margaret Burroughs, and for introducing her students to African and Asian art through field trips to local collections.
While at SAIC, Blackshear supplied the analytical drawings for two of Helen Gardner's books, Art Through the Ages (1926)—one of the earliest American art history textbooks to incorporate non-Western art—and Understanding the Arts (1932). She also supplied illustrations for Katharine Kuh's Art Has Many Faces (1951).
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