Charles Alston

Charles Alston-Painter-Sculptor, Illustrator, Muralist-Teacher And A Member Of The Harlem Renaissance Artists Group.

Charles Alston-Painter-Sculptor, Illustrator, Muralist-Teacher And A Member Of The Harlem Renaissance Artists Group.

Alston was the first African-American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Alston designed and painted murals at the Harlem Hospital and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building. In 1990 Alston's bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. became the first image of an African American displayed at the White House.

Charles Henry Alston was born in Charlotte, NC on 11.28.1907, Charles Henry Alston was born in Charlotte, N.C.to Reverend Primus Priss Alston and Anna Elizabeth (Miller) Alston, as the youngest of five children. Three survived past infancy: Charles, his older sister Rousmaniere and his older brother Wendell. His father had been born into slavery in 1851 in Pittsboro, North Carolina. After the Civil War, he gained an education and graduated from St. Augustine's College in Charlotte. He became a prominent minister and founder of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, with an African-American congregation. The senior Alston was described as a "race man": an African American who dedicated his skills to the furtherance of the black race. Reverend Alston met his wife when she was a student at his school. Charles was nicknamed "Spinky" by his father, and kept the nickname as an adult. In 1910, when Charles was three, his father died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. Locals described his father as the "Booker T. Washington of Charlotte". Soon after his father died, his mother moved to New York and married Harry P. Bearden (the uncle of artist Romare Bearden).
Alston attended DeWitt Clinton High School, taught there, and graduated from Columbia University in 1929. In 1931, he received a master’s degree from Columbia’s Teachers College.

Alston directed art programs and community centers in the New York area including the Harlem Workshop. Jacob Lawrence as one of his students at Utopia House. He directed the 35 artists who created the Harlem Hospital murals for the Federal Arts Project in 1935 and 1936, painting two of the murals himself. Many of Alston’ works were published in the New Yorker, Fortune, and Collier’s magazines. In 1950, he sold a painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also became the first Black instructor at the Art Students league.

He later taught at the Museum of Modern Art and City College of New York while receiving many awards. Alston’s best-known paintings are "Family" and "Walking" at the Whitney Museum and a private collection respectively. In 1975, he was the first recipient of Columbia University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Charles Alston and his wife, Myra A. Logan (a surgeon) died of cancer within months of each other in 1977.

Source:A History of African-American Artists from 1792 to Present
by Romare Bearden & Harry Henderson
Copyright 1993 by Romare Bearden & Harry Henderson
Pantheon Books, NY
ISBN 0-394-57016-2

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Alston