For four decades, G. (Gloucester) Caliman Coxe was considered the dean of African-American artists in Louisville, Kentucky, an art scene in the 1950s and '60s that included Sam Gilliam, Bob Thompson, and Kenneth Victor Young. Born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Coxe moved to Louisville in 1924 where his parents were accomplished watercolorists. He worked as an illustrator and display artist for the Lyric and Grand Theaters and an illustrator at the Fort Knox Training Aid Center, from which he retired after 20 years. He then entered the University of Louisville to study visual art in his forties. He was the first African American to receive a Hite Art Scholarship and its first African-American fine arts graduate. He exhibited throughout the South, including the 1972 solo exhibition Paintings by G. C. Coxe: 4 Phases at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University in Nashville, TN. His retrospective Rags and Wires, Sticks and Pantyhose Too was held at the Allen R. Hite Art Institute, The College of Arts and Sciences, University of Louisville in 1995.
