Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston in the studio, 1948-1949

Access Restrictions:

Access note. Collection contains fragile audiovisual/photographic formats. Digital viewing files for all negative images are available through this collection guide.

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Extent:

110 items

Scope and content:

The images in this group, in safety film negative format, were taken by photojournalist Griff Davis in the late 1940s to document African American artists Charles Alston and Hale Woodruff as they worked in their New York City studio on a mural project for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company. The giant mural was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based African American-owned company to illustrate the historic role of African Americans in the settling of California. These studio photos feature the artists at work; other people - unidentified sitters and casual visitors - also appear in the photographs. There are also a handful of color images of some of Charles Alston's modernist paintings and one sculpture.

Positive digital scans of these negatives are available for viewing through the links in each entry.

Biographical / historical:

Charles Alston and Hale Woodruff were 20th century African American artists. Although they were known for their commissioned mural works, they also created paintings, sculptures, and other artworks.

In the late 1940s Alston and Woodruff began work on a mural project commissioned by Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, which asked the artists to illustrate African American contributions to the settling of California. Alston worked with Woodruff on the murals in a large studio space in New York; they used ladders to reach the upper parts of the canvas. The mural consists of two panels: "Exploration and Colonization" by Alston and "Settlement and Development" by Woodruff. The murals were unveiled in 1949 at the Golden State Mutual Headquarters in Los Angeles.

[Source: adapted from Wikipedia page on Charles Alston, viewed July 1, 2021]

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Some titles for these images were transcribed from a title list in the collection created by Griff Davis in the 1980s. Other titles and captions have been extrapolated by library staff from similar titled images or from image content.

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