#dox thrash

[soundgrammar]

Dox Thrash, Marylou, 1939, carbograph on paper, plate: 9 7⁄8 x 7 in. (25.2 x 17.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from D.C. Public Library, 1967.72.257

[lisamarie-vee]

[oldsardens]

Dox Thrash - Twenty-fourth Street and Ridge Avenue

[jadeseadragon]

Dox Thrash (American, 1893 - 1965), Untitled (Strike), ca. 1940, watercolor, 17⅛ in. × 12 in. (43.5 × 30.5 cm), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

[altrbody]

Cabin Days, Dox Thrash 1938-39

[philamuseum]

Dox Thrash was a prolific printmaker who was born on this day in 1893 and settled in Philadelphia in the late 1920s. In 1937, at the height of the Great Depression, he became the first Black artist to work for the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia, a branch of the Works Progress Administration, a federal relief program designed to employ thousands of artists and share their work with the public. Learn more about the artist in the recently digitized publication "Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered."

"Monday Morning Wash," around 1938–39, by Dox Thrash

[joyslow]

dox thrash

[selfportraitsofcolor]

Dox Thrash Self Portrait US (c. 1938) [Source]

Dox Thrash (1893-1965) was an accomplished draftsman, printmaker, watercolorist, and painter, whose art reflected his experiences as an African American in Philadelphia. He became well known in the 1940s after developing the Carborundum printmaking technique at the Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop (311 Broad Street) of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. By rubbing coarse Carborundum crystals onto a metal plate with a heavy flatiron, he created prints with dense blacks, smooth, sculptural forms, and velvety textures. His dignified representations of African Americans in his portraits, genre scenes, nude studies, and landscapes deeply resonated with the black community in Philadelphia and earned him national acclaim.