Dox Thrash: An African-American Master Printmaker Rediscovered (The Jacob Lawrence Series on American Artists)
Dox Thrash always knew he wanted to be an artist. He left rural Georgia at the turn of the century and took night courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while working as an elevator operator. Although his career was interrupted by service in World War I, he earned a living as a graphic designer until the Depression. After settling in Philadelphia, Thrash joined the Fine Print workshop of the WPA, where he was instrumental in discovering the carborundom technique, an intaglio process whose results resemble a mezzotint. His depictions of everyday life, memories of the South, graceful nudes, and humanistic portraits convey an African American social realism that have hardly been appreciated until now. Curator and organizer of a major retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ittmann has assembled a catalogue raisonn‚ along with four essays by additional scholars dealing with the artist's life plus the social milieu of his time. WPA artists made important contributions to American art history, and the African American artists among them are especially underrepresented in most collections, making this high-quality book a worthwhile purchase. Susan Lense, Upper Arlington P.L., OHCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.