While William H. Johnson (1901–70) is considered a major American artist, his works, characterized by their stunning folk-art simplicity, only recently received their due.
Johnson was born in rural South Carolina to a working-class African American family. By age 17, he moved to New York to find work, with the aim of saving up money for art school. He eventually enrolled in the prestigious National Academy of Design, where he excelled to the degree that his teachers raised funds for him to study art in Europe.
Johnson spent the late 1920s in France, where he studied European modernism. After marrying Danish textile artist Holcha Krake in 1930, he spent most of that decade in Scandinavia, where he developed a deep interest in primitivism and folk art that defined his later, most enduring work.
When Johnson returned to New York in 1938, he began focusing on images of Black life in the urban North and rural South. The painting “Street Musicians,” for example (see above), pays homage to two brightly dressed musicians on a bustling street corner—one on guitar, the other on fiddle—displaying the dignity and vibrancy of Black American life.
After his wife’s death in 1944, Johnson never fully recovered and spent the remainder of his days hospitalized. Most of his life’s works were nearly destroyed when his caretaker said he was unable to pay further storage fees. Several of his supporters came through, and more than 1,000 of his works were sent to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where they were put on display, thus, reviving interest in his work.
In 2012, more than a century after his birth, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Forever Stamp showcasing Johnson’s painting “Flowers” (1939–40), which appears on this week’s cover. The honor recognized him as both one of the nation’s foremost African American artists and a major figure in 20th-century American art.
Through his honest and deeply human portrayals, Johnson paid homage to the Black experience in the North and South of his time, illuminating them with great dignity and joy.
—Prepared by the World Tribune staff
June 13, 2025 World Tribune, p. 12
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