{"data":{"id":"13","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":13,"topgoose_id":48,"tms_id":13,"display_name":"Charles Henry Alston","sort_name":"Alston Charles","display_date":"1907–1977","begin_date":"1907","end_date":"1977","biography":"\u003cp\u003eAn influential painter, printmaker, sculptor, teacher, and activist, Charles Henry Alston was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Moving with his family to Harlem in 1915, Alston began painting and sculpting as an adolescent before pursuing formal art studies at Columbia University in 1925. During college and after receiving his MA in 1931, Alston taught art at two important Harlem community centers: the Utopia Children’s House, where he trained a young \u003ca href=\"/artists/759\"\u003eJacob Lawrence\u003c/a\u003e, and the Harlem Art Workshop. The experiences led him to establish his own studio workshop in 1934, which quickly became a hub for artists and intellectuals, including \u003ca href=\"/artists/80\"\u003eRomare Bearden\u003c/a\u003e, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Knight, and Augusta Savage. This deep engagement with his community is reflected in Alston’s art, from the Social Realist scenes of his Harlem Hospital murals to the more painterly compositions of his canvases, both figurative and abstract.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/2658\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Family\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e is a portrait of four figures, rendered through bold blocks of color and defined by thin lines created with a palette knife. Calling the family “a recurring theme in my painting,” Alston wrote that the work was “an attempt to express the security, stability and human fulfillment which the ideal family represents.” His artistic challenge, he explained, was “to find the painterly equivalents for these qualities, as well as [to] tell the story”; he found the solution in “a compact, well-organized design with subtle harmonies and discords and a certain solid, monumental quality.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500089734","wikidata_id":"Q1906150","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:27:36.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-09T07:00:47.545-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/13/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/13/exhibitions"}}}}