Ernest Crichlow
One Way Only.
(the article below was published in the New York Times as obituary)
Ernest Crichlow, 91, Lyrical Painter, Dies
By MONICA POTTSNOV. 14, 2005
Ernest Crichlow, an influential Harlem Renaissance painter whose depictions of African-Americans reflected social injustices and shifting social realities through much of the 20th century, died on Thursday at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 91 and lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
The cause was heart failure, his sister Natalie Campbell said.
Shoe Shine, 1953.
While still in high school, Mr. Crichlow met the sculptor Augusta Savage, whose Harlem studio was a workplace and gathering point for artists of the day. There, Mr. Crichlow met artistic contemporaries like Charles Alston, Norman Lewis and Robert Pious, people who would, with him, become some of America’s greatest black artists.
Even before the civil rights movement gained nationwide momentum, Mr. Crichlow’s artwork was often heavily imbued with politics, expressing outrage along with some lyrical portraiture. Some of his more highly charged works include the lithograph “Lovers,” (1938) depicting a Ku Klux Klansman sexually assaulting a black woman in her bedroom, and the 1971 paintings “Black Angel,” and “The Flag,” which showed a black woman on a cross in front of an American flag.
Cissy.
Ernest Crichlow was born in 1914, the second of nine children of immigrants from Barbados. After high school he studied commercial art in Manhattan but graduated during the Depression and was unable to find enough commercial work to make a living. He began to work for the Works Progress Administration federal arts program, teaching art and working on mural projects. He began concentrating on fine art, and his work was shown widely in galleries in the Northeast through the 1940’s and 50’s.
Dreams of the Big House.
In 1958 he helped found Brooklyn’s Fulton Art Fair, a community festival showcasing local artists. In 1969 he, along with Romare Bearden and Lewis, founded the Cinque Gallery in Manhattan to specialize in the work of African-American artists.
He was one of 10 black artists honored by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
In addition to Ms. Campbell, Mr. Crichlow is survived by another sister, Gloria Collier, and a son, Anthony, both of Brooklyn.
New Dreams, 2003.
Mr. Crichlow acknowledged that he was often criticized for limiting himself in subject matter to the African-American experience, but he believed it best represented him in the world of art. “There are a lot of other people who can do a lot of other things, and it may be small,” Mr. Crichlow said. “This is the thing that I feel most at home with.”
See also: https://africanah.org/romare-bearden-prints/