Did you get to check out the December exhibition at the Schomburg Library, in Harlem NY of the work of Aaron Douglas. Douglas was an artist known for his small block prints, who died in 1979. Aaron Douglas is known for his WPA murals. Here is one on display from the, Schomburg collection called the Song of Towers Mural. I think it is still on display there. Note that abstractness, even back then, it was very mod, very art deco. Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas (1898-1979) knew how to swing a design. Within the rectangles of his frames, streamers of light shoot out toward the world, while concentric circles pull your gaze straight into the bull’s eye of the scene. In a portable mural Douglas did for Harlem’s Schomburg library in 1934, two African dancers tilt back and seem to spin in a centrifuge. Below them, the canvas almost vibrates with the rhythms conga players beat on tree-trunk drums. Douglas also uses geometry to bust his subjects out of their frames. That’s one way he breaks down the walls between art and life.
Note that a lot of Douglas' work is a product of Franklin Roosevelt's make-work programs of the 1930s.
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