WILLIAM H. JOHNSON (1901 - 1970) Training for War.
Color pochoir and screenprint, circa 1942. 292x445 mm; 11 1/2x17 1/2 inches. One of only several proofs. Signed in ink, lower right. A very good impression with vibrant colors.
Provenance: Mary Beattie Brady, director of the Harmon Foundation, New York; thence by descent to Sheldon Roesch, New York; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection, 2000.
Exhibited: The Challenge of the Modern: African American Artists 1925 - 1945, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, January 23 - April 6, 2003, with the label on the frame back.
Training for War is an iconic image of both African-American and American art, and a very scarce example of an important modern color screenprint. While living in New York in the early 1940s, William H. Johnson only printed a handful of impressions from his screenprints depicting colorful images of both the rural South and of Harlem. These were experimental, painterly prints, using both screens and pochoir (hand-colored stencils), with changes made from impression to impression. Out of the 17 known screenprint images Johnson made, Training for War and another screenprint, Off to War, reflect the contributions of African-American soldiers and Red Cross workers to the war effort. Johnson worked with screenprinting for only three years until tragedy struck in 1943--his Danish wife, Holcha, was diagnosed with breast cancer and died months later. We have found only three other impressions of Training for War in public collections--one at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and two at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (both unsigned).
This image was also reproduced on a United States 37 cent postage stamp in 2005 as part of the To Form a More Perfect Union series, which commemorated the Civil Rights movement with images of African-American visual art.
