Loïs Mailou Jones paved a path for black artists who had been shut out of the world of fine art
Black artists were not allowed to submit their work to most galleries and exhibitions in the 1930s and 1940s
Loïs Mailou Jones began her career at a time when racial prejudices and gender discrimination were strong in
American culture, but she managed to transcend the race and gender barriers and lead a seventy-year career
as an artist and educator.
Encouraged by the African-American sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, Lois Mailou Jones enrolled in the School of
the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, and went on to become the first African American to graduate from it.
Showing great talent from a young age, she held her first solo exhibition when she was eighteen and worked
as an assistant to the costume designer Grace Ripley. However, the racial bias she faced held her back,
until she was finally recruited to work at Howard University, which would become the birthplace of the
Harlem Renaissance.
She eventually became one of the school’s the most eminent professors. She spent the
year 1937 perfecting her art at the Académie Julian in Paris, where she adopted outdoor painting, working
with the painter Émile Bernard (1868-1941).
See some of their artwork below, click on the images to enlarge them in a new window.
The Loïs Mailou Jones National Museum of Women in the Arts
The Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color