?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
ALMA THOMAS (1891 - 1978) Dark Orange Azaleas.
Acrylic on heavy wove paper, 1972. 140x220 mm; 5 1/2x8 5/8 inches. Signed, titled and dated in blue ink, verso.
Provenance: gift from the artist; private New York collection.
Born in Columbus, Georgia, the eldest of four daughters, Alma Woodsey Thomas moved in 1907 to Washington, DC. The city public schools enabled her to attend art classes, and she eventually entered Howard University at the age of 30, graduating in 1924 with the school's first degree in fine arts. She taught art classes at Shaw Junior High School in Washington for 35 years. Attending classes at Columbia University during the summers in the 1930s and at American University in the 1950s, she developed the abstract idiom for which she is known, and was associated with what is called the Washington Color Field School. In 1960, she ended her teaching career and began a full-time dedication to her art at the age of 69. She achieved national recognition in 1972 when she received a one-person exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a first for an African-American woman.
