William Artis

William Artis (1919-1977)

Educated by Augusta Savage and at the Art Students League, Artis won his first career accolade in the 1933 Harmon Foundation exhibition for Head of a Girl. An instructor at the Harlem YMCA (1934-41), he attended Syracuse University (BA, 1950; MFA, 1951) and taught in Nebraska and Minnesota; he was named Outstanding Educator of America in 1970. Known for portrait heads of youths modeled in terracotta, in the late 1940s Artis began making functional ceramic objects.

Important Source Material:

Gates, Henry Louis et. al. Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

NHS