A bronze portrait bust of a lovely young woman. From Anastasia Tsaleza, “Augusta Savage: The Woman Who Defined 20th-Century Sculpture,” Daily Art Magazine, November 3, 2025: ‘Augusta Savage’s sculptures stood out because they depicted a real, humane face of African Americans, instead of perpetuating the racist stereotypes that were commonplace in the art of the time, bolstered by movements like primitivism. Being African American herself, the depictions of people from Savage’s community were authentic and realistic. She paved the way for a new kind of sculpture; one that was intimate and representational instead of distant and merely observational. Augusta Savage is a modern artist and should be more widely celebrated as such. She introduced something completely novel and “foreign” to 20th-century sculpture; the idea that Black people’s lives and artistic voices are of equal significance, beauty and righteousness to everyone else’s. She proved that there were other aspects, outside of the popular white imagination, that occupied the Black American’s mind; there was religion, love, family, poverty and, oftentimes, fun. The sculptor surpassed the caricature, one-dimensional image that was the norm when it came to depictions of African Americans; a sad and shameful relic of the confederate past. She shattered harmful binaries that affected her community, showing outsiders that it was no longer necessary for a Black person to either belong in the “Uncle Tom”/”Aunt Jemima” categories or be an outlaw. The people depicted in her works were just as human, intelligent and capable as everyone else, with profound thoughts and feelings that went beyond what the racist mind conceived.’
Your art history post for today: by African-American artist Augusta Savage, portrait of Gwendolyn Knight, ca. 1934–35, bronze. As a bronze cast, it appears in more than one collection, both public and private. #arthistory #blackart #blackarthistory #BlackHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists
