Eldzier Cortor

Eldzier Cortor (January 10, 1916 – November 26, 2015)

Educated at SAIC, Cortor worked for the WPA/FAP before receiving two Rosenwald Fellowships (1944-45) to study in Georgia’s Sea Islands. In 1949, he visited Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti on a Guggenheim grant, he then studied lithography in Mexico. Included in LIFE’s “19 Young American Artists” (1950), Cortor later taught at Pratt and exhibited at the Museum of NCAAA. Executed in a painterly style that mimics collage, his intimate interiors and views of African American female nudes are influenced by African art and social realism.

Important Source Material:

Kenkeleba Gallery. Three Masters: Eldzier Cortor, Hughie Lee-Smith, Archibald John Motley, Jr. New York: Kenkeleba Gallery, 1988.

NHS