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Focus Works of Art
Untitled

John Thomas Biggers (American, 1924 - 2001) Untitled, 1994

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African American Artists in North Carolina
In Untitled, Gastonia native John Biggers draws on imagery from West Africa and the American South to create a vision of people looking toward the horizon to encounter the dawn. Placed on opposite sides of the painting, two monumental figures tower over a group of others, perhaps a family, and encircle them in their arms as a maternal gesture. A small child rises from the animal-filled water on a lily pad. His extended arms connect him to the women in front of him. The women wear patterned dresses reminiscent of quilt patterns and African textiles, and the men wear denim overalls. The patterns in the men's hair echo the designs in the women's clothing. Emerging from their communal past, the group members look over a field planted with rows of crops, which repeat the shape of the women's cornrows, to face the possibilities of the future.

What is John Biggers's background?
Born April 13, 1924, in Gastonia, North Carolina, John Biggers was the youngest of seven children of Paul and Cora Biggers. Cora worked as a housekeeper, and Paul was a preacher, teacher and school principal. They encouraged their children to obtain an education. Originally enrolled in Virginia's Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) to pursue a career in the plumbing profession, Biggers switched his focus to art after taking a class with Victor Lowenfeld. A Jewish refugee from World War II Germany, Lowenfeld encouraged his African American students to learn about their African heritage by studying African art and its contexts. Biggers continued his study of art and art education under Lowenfeld at Pennsylvania State University, where he obtained his master's degree in 1948. Biggers moved to Houston, Texas, in 1949 to start an art department at Texas Southern University. Eight years later, he made his first trip to Africa to study its culture and traditions. His experiences in Africa and growing up in North Carolina influence the imagery of his paintings.

What are some images from Africa and the South in Untitled?
In Untitled, the figure rises from a pool of water populated with animals found in Africa, including a crocodile with skin made to look like a quilt pattern, a frog and a turtle. The child carries three representations of birds, one in each hand and one on a headdress reminiscent of those worn by the Yoruba rulers in Nigeria. Biggers uses symbols from Ghana also. The monumental female figures hold an Akan comb with a stool symbolizing national pride depicted on the openwork handle. A figure on the right holds a staff topped by a sankofa bird that looks back to remind us not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Many descendants of slaves can trace their roots from West Africa to the American South. The men in the painting wear overalls, a common outfit among farmers and laborers. The women wear dresses covered with patterns that evoke both the quilts of the South and African weavings and adinkra stamp patterns. Images of familiar southern buildings - a modest church and sharecropper's house - appear at opposite ends of the field.