Sargent Claude Johnson
| Sargent Claude Johnson | |
|---|---|
Consuelo Kanaga, Sargent Johnson, 1934
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| Born |
Sargent Claude Johnson October 7, 1888 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | October 10, 1967 (aged 79) San Francisco, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Painting, sculpture, ceramics |
Sargent Claude Johnson (October 7, 1888 – October 10, 1967) was one of the first African-American artists working in California to achieve a national reputation. He was known for Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. He was a painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver. He worked with a variety of media, including ceramics, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolor, and wood. He was in the Communist Party for most of his life.
Sargent Johnson was the third of six children, born to a father of Swedish descent and mother of African-American and Cherokee ancestry. His father died in 1892, leaving the kids to be raised by their mother. In 1902, when his mother died, the boys of the family were sent to an orphanage in Worcester, Massachusetts and the girls to a Catholic school for African American and Native American girls in Pennsylvania. At a young age, Sargent and his siblings went to live with their uncle, Sherman Jackson Williams, and his wife, May Howard Jackson. May was a famous sculptor specializing in Negro themes, and she undoubtedly influenced Sargent Johnson at an early age. Some of his siblings did not identify themselves as African American, and chose to live as either Native Americans or Caucasians, though Sargent identified as African American.
Johnson’s transition from practicing artist to professional is largely undocumented, though some say he left from Boston to Chicago to live with some relatives. In 1915, Sargent Johnson moved to the San Francisco Bay area. The Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which had a stimulating influence on California art, took place shortly after his move. The same year, Sargent Johnson married Pearl Lawson and began studying drawing and painting at the A. W. Best School of Art. He attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) from 1919 to 1923, where his teachers included the sculptors Beniamino Bufano and Ralph Stackpole.
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