Return of Europa
Oil on canvas
51 1/2 x 59 inches
Circa 1958
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.
As exhibited in:
Elevation from Within: The Study of Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 2019–2024, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2019; Richardson Family Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2021; Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 2022
A first-generation artist of the New Negro Movement, Hale Aspacio Woodruff created paintings, prints, and murals that depict the historic struggles and perseverance of African Americans. While some of his work, such as his Afro Emblems series, is entirely abstract, Woodruff is perhaps best known for scenes that blend a representational style with a modern idiom and African aesthetic. He believed it was important to “keep your artistic level at the highest possible range of development and . . . make your work convey . . . what we are as a people.” It was a philosophy that Woodruff lived by and passed on to his students at Atlanta University.
A native of Cairo, Illinois, Woodruff worked as a political cartoonist before enrolling at the John Herron Art School in Indianapolis. For a time, Woodruff lived at the Senate Avenue YMCA, the largest segregated branch in the nation, which served as a cultural salon of sorts for African American artists, philosophers, and writers, such as W. E. B. DuBois and William Scott. Scott, who had just returned from Europe, inspired Woodruff to study abroad. Financed in part by prize money attached to his 1926 bronze Harmon Distinguished Achievement Award, in 1927 Woodruff embarked on a four-year sojourn in Paris.
Economic uncertainty brought on by the Great Depression induced Woodruff to accept a teaching position at Atlanta University—the first HBCU in the American South—in 1931. In the years that followed, Woodruff grew increasingly distressed by the dearth of opportunities for African American artists on the national stage: “This situation,” Woodruff said, “led me to the idea of an all-Negro annual for the purpose of (1) offering a place to show, (2) providing an opportunity to earn a little money through purchase prizes, and (3) establishing a collection of art by Negroes at Atlanta University, which would be available to students, schools, and other institutions.” The first Atlanta Art Annual exhibition was held in April 1942 and grew steadily in size and significance until the final presentation in 1970.
Other works by this artist