NORMAN LEWIS

Norman Wilfred Lewis (1909 – 1979) was an American painter, scholar, and teacher. Lewis, who was African-American and of Bermudian descent, was associated with abstract expressionism, and used representational strategies to focus on black urban life and his community's struggles.

Lewis was born in 1909, in the Harlem neighborhood in New York City, New York. His self-education got him started in his career. He studied art with Augusta Savage at the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem. Between 1933 and 1935, Lewis studied at Teachers College, Columbia University and at the John Reed Club Art School.

In 1934 he became a member of the 306 Group, a collection of African American artists and writers who discussed art's role in society. In 1935, he was a co-founder of the Harlem Artists Guild, whose members included Bearden, Selma Burke, and Beauford and Joseph Delaney. He participated in Works Progress Administration as an art teacher starting in 1935, and the Harlem Community Art Center.

Lewis began his career in 1930, with mostly figurative work and social realism. In the late 1940s, his work became increasingly abstract. He became interested in the Abstract Expressionist movement and began attending meetings at Studio 35 with The Irascibles. Norman Lewis was the only African-American artist among the first generation of abstract expressionists. Partially because of this, Lewis did not fully embrace the Abstract Expressionist movement because "it did not favor all artists equally", and he was struggling with attaining collectors and museums despite his awards and prestigious exhibition history. He would later create a style of mixed Abstract Expression and figuration all his own.

In 1969, Lewis founded the Cinque Gallery in New York City along with Romare Bearden and Ernest Crichlow. During the same year, he protested in front of Metropolitan Museum of Art because of the highly controversial exhibition, Harlem on My Mind. Although the show was meant to document the cultural achievements of African-Americans, not one black artist was included in the exhibit, let alone consulted.

He started teaching at the Art Students League of New York in 1972 and worked there until his death in 1979.

Lewis' first major exhibition was in 1934 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he received an honorable mention for his painting titled The Wanderer (Johnny). Lewis had art shows in 1951 at the Museum of Modern Art and in 1958, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

His work is included in many public museum collections including Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Blanton Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, among others.