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Archibald Motley. Archibald John Motley, Jr. (October 7, 1891 – January 16, 1981), [1] was an American visual artist. Motley is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement ...
- Summary of Archibald J. Motley, Jr.
- Accomplishments
- Biography of Archibald J. Motley, Jr.
Archibald Motley captured the complexities of black, urban America in his colorful street scenes and portraits. Painting during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, Motley infused his genre scenes with the rhythms of jazz and the boisterousness of city life, and his portraits sensitively reveal his sitters' inner lives. His use of color to portray v...
Motley more often cited the Old Masters such as Rembrandt and Frans Halsas his influences, and his painting of light and skin tone reflect his careful study of these artists. His paintings, though,...At the time when writers and other artists were portraying African American life in new, positive ways, Motley depicted the complexities and subtleties of racial identity, giving his subjects a voi...While Motley strove to paint the realities of black life, some of his depictions veer toward caricature and seem to accept the crude stereotypes of African Americans. While some critics remain vexe...Childhood
Archibald J. Motley, Jr. was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1891 to upper-middle class African American parents; his father was a porter for the Pullman railway cars and his mother was a teacher. His paternal grandmother had been a slave, but now the family enjoyed a high standard of living due to their social class and their light-colored skin (the family background included French and Creole). When Motley was two the family moved to Englewood, a well-to-do and mostly white Chicago suburb...
Early Training and Work
Motley enrolled in the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he learned academic art techniques. It was an expensive education; a family friend helped pay for Motley's first year, and Motley dusted statues in the museum to meet the costs. Motley befriended both white and black artists at SAIC, though his work would almost solely depict the latter. The first show he exhibited in was "Paintings by Negro Artists," held in 1917 at the Arts and Letters Society of the Y.M.C.A. A...
Mature Period
Upon Motley's return from Paris in 1930, he began teaching at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and working for the Federal Arts Project (part of the New Deal's Works Projects Administration). Though the Great Depression was ravaging America, Motley and his wife were cushioned by savings and ownership of their home, and the decade was a fertile one for Motley. He produced some of his best known works during the 1930s and 1940s, including his slices of life set in "Bronzeville," Chicago, t...
- American
- October 7, 1891
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- January 16, 1981
Archibald John Motley Jr. Chicagoan Archibald Motley dedicated his career to depicting the lively world of the city’s “Black Belt,” a vibrant area in Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville known for music and nightlife.
Oct 2, 2015 · Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist is the first full-scale survey of his paintings in two decades. The exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to carefully examine Motley’s dynamic depictions of modern life in his home town, Chicago, as well as in Jazz Age Paris and Mexico.
Born into a supportive family in Chicago, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the few programs at the time that admitted Black students. He became the preeminent “Jazz Aged Modernist” 2 and one of the most recognized African American painters in prewar America.
Feb 16, 2018 · Archibald John Motley, Jr. (1891-1981), was born in New Orleans and lived and worked in the first half of the 20th century in a predominately white neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest side, a few miles from the city’s growing black community known as “Bronzeville.”
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Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist exhibition. The exhibition was created and organized by Richard J. Powell. His goal was to bring recognition to one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, Archibald J. Motley.
