Return of Europa

A renowned educator, Hale Woodruff established a national exhibition series for Black artists at Atlanta University. Fighting segregation, he secured access to the High Museum of Art for his students. A painter and a printmaker, Woodruff emphasized the creation of prints, arguing that they were less expensive and students could give them to family members.

The energetically applied paint of Return of Europa may reflect his encounter in New York with the hyper-modernist genre of Abstract Expressionism. Organic shapes with feathery edges dominate. Except for the swaths of yellow and yellowish whites, his colors are earthy tones contributing to a sense of ponderousness. The title alludes to the classical myth in which Zeus abducts the eponymous princess, whose name is also associated with the continent of Europe. The alteration of the classical reference to the “return” of Europa, therefore, has clear connections both to Woodruff’s own art sojourn to Europe and to his pointed political critiques of Eurocentrism as a founding member of the New Negro Movement.