Alma Thomas (1891-1978)

Expressionist painter and art educator Alma Thomas was born in Georgia in 1891. Her family moved to Washington D.C. while she was in her mid-teens, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life. Thomas enrolled in Howard University, studying under James V. Herring and became the first graduate of the newly organized art department in 1924. She began teaching after graduation, but continued studying art and painting part-time.

In 1946, she joined Lois Mailou Jones’ Little Paris group, members of which sketched, painted and exhibited together in the Washington D.C. area. She studied painting at American University under Joe Summerford, Robert Gates, and Jacob Kainen; all of whom inspired her to look at the structure of a painting differently and use color as a single, qualitative element. When she retired, she began painting in earnest. Her work evolved from more traditional styles and themes to fully realized abstract works that explored color and composition which reflected her own unique vision of nature as well as incorporating influence from the Washington Color School. She was also known as a brilliant watercolorist.

Her first retrospective exhibition, curated by James A. Porter, was held at Howard University in 1966. For this show, she created the Earth paintings, a series of works inspired by nature that resembled Byzantine mosaics. In 1972, she became the first African American woman to be given a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. Soon after she exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

After seeing an exhibit of Matisse’s late gouache collages at the Museum of Modern Art, 1961, she began experimenting with rearranging geometric shapes. Thomas carefully calibrated the colors in the positive and the negative.

Thomas’s work is found in many museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Phillips Collection, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In 2009, two of her paintings, Watusi (Hard Edge) and Sky Light were chosen by First Lady Michelle Obama to be exhibited during the Obama presidency. Several retrospective exhibitions have been dedicated to her work, including A Life in Art: Alma Thomas, 1891-1978, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 1981; Alma W. Thomas: Retrospective Exhibition, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1972.

The Columbus Museum, GA and the Chrysler Museum of Art, VA have recently presented a comprehensive retrospective of her work entitled, Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful in the summer of 2022. In addition to showing at these locations, the exhibition was also presented at the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. and the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN.