Alma Thomas : Monograph published by Prestel

Book design By Pentagram

New, Sealed Hardcover

This comprehensive monograph examines the work of Alma Thomas, an important artist in the Color Field movement and a pioneer among African-American artists working in abstraction. Alma Thomas started her painting career at the age of 68, after retiring from teaching art to junior high school students in Washington, DC. At the age of 80, Thomas’s exuberantly colored abstractions were exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where she was the first black female artist to be given a solo show. Filled with vibrant illustrations, this stunning volume traces Thomas’s development as an artist: her transition from figuration to abstraction, her fascination with the natural world and space exploration, and the mesmerizing mosaic-like paintings she completed before her death. New writings focus on different themes in Thomas’s work, and the book includes specially commissioned responses by leading artists Leslie Hewitt, Jennie C. Jones, Leslie Wayne, and Saya Woolfalk. Together these bring Thomas’s work to a new generation of readers. As the work of many African-American abstractionists is only recently coming into the spotlight, this important book on Alma Thomas profiles a truly pioneering figure.

Review

"Alma Thomas’s story has an aura of art-world legend: a middle-school teacher dedicates herself to painting after she retires at 69 and becomes the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney. Her work oscillates off the pages."

-The New York Times

About the Author

Ian Berry is the Dayton Director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.

Lauren Haynes is Associate Curator, Permanent Collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Bridget R. Cooks is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine.

Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Nikki A. Greene is Assistant Professor of Art at Wellesley College.