Customer Reviews

Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective of the Paintings

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The recent celebration of the Color Field painters in Washington DC, of which Alma thomas is considered a part, has provided the opportunity to enjoy her ravishing works again in several venues. This catalogue which was produced for the much under-appreciated show which toured the country has got going for it that it provides a comprehensive look at at her work from different periods. But having seen the show on its stop in Tampa, I can say that the illustrations don't convey the effect of her painting all that well. In person the painting have unflinching devil's -in the-details sort of beauty which verges on the colorfully tragic. This sets her apart from the other Color Field painters whose beautiful but blowsy works range from the classically handsome works of Kenneth Noland to the quite tragic works of Morris Louis (at least that is how the curators of the recent Morris Louis show at the Hirshhorn have definitely tried to have Louis come across) That Alma Thomas, one of the greatest of African American artists had a more lapidarian sense of beauty I can attest by a test-piece on paper we own by her which I look at every day. Here she goes through subtle gradations of her well known srtrokes, varying hues and intensity with an assurance which is riveting. To me it shows the enormous control that her large-scale paintings took and the very hard-won inevitability to her color compositions. That she lived quite close to my own house, in a house on 15th St., N.W. in DC is even more reason to do her homage.