Selma H. Burke
| Selma Burke | |
|---|---|
Burke with her portrait bust of
Booker T. Washington, c. 1935 |
|
| Born |
Selma Hortense Burke December 31, 1900 Mooresville, North Carolina, United States |
| Died | August 29, 1995 (aged 94) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Columbia University |
| Known for | Sculpture |
Selma Hortense Burke (December 31, 1900 – August 29, 1995) was an American sculptor. She educated others in her passion of art, she founded two art schools, one in New York City and another in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her art is on display in Washington D.C. and North Carolina. She did the bust of Duke Ellington, portraits of Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington, and sculptures of John Brown (abolitionist) and President Calvin Coolidge. Burke is best known for her bas relief of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Born on December 31, 1900 in Mooresville, North Carolina to a farming family, she was the seventh of ten children of Neal and Mary Elizabeth Burke. Her interest in sculpting was ignited by her maternal grandmother who was a painter. Her father was an AME Church Zion Minister, she demonstrated an early interest in art, but her mother thought she should pursue a more marketable vocation. However, her father nurtured her interests by bringing home souvenirs and art objects from his international travels in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean as an ocean liner chef. Burke attended a one-room segregated school with a roof that was so leaky she had to protect her books using an umbrella. She graduated from the St. Agnes Training School for Nurses in Raleigh in 1924 and earned a doctorate in arts and letters from Livingstone College in 1970. She then moved to Harlem, where she found work as a nurse.
Burke was caught up in the Harlem Renaissance with Claude McKay and, influenced by the Harlem Community Art Center, began to chase her dream of being an artist. Burke continued sculpting in her free time. The Rosenwald (1935) and the Boehler (1936) Foundation Grants in the late 1930s enabled her to study sculpture in Vienna and with Aristide Maillol in Paris, culminating in her Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in 1941.
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