Wadsworth Aikens Jarrell (born November 20, 1929) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born in Albany, Georgia, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduation, he became heavily involved in the local art scene and through his early work he explored the working life of African-Americans in Chicago and found influence in the sights and sounds of jazz music. In the late 1960s he opened WJ Studio and Gallery, where he, along with his wife, Jae, hosted regional artists and musicians.
Mid-1960s Chicago saw a rise in racial violence leading to the examination of race relations and black empowerment by local artists. Jarrell became involved in the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a group that would serve as a launching pad for the era's Black Arts movement. In 1967, OBAC artists created the Wall of Respect, a mural in Chicago that depicted African American heroes and is credited with triggering the political mural movement in Chicago and beyond. In 1969, Jarrell co-founded AFRICOBRA: African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists. AFRICOBRA would become internationally acclaimed for their politically themed art and use of "coolade colors" in their paintings.
Jarrell's career took him to Africa in 1977, where he found inspiration in the Senufo people of Ivory Coast, Mali and Burkina Faso. Upon return to the United States he moved to Georgia and taught at the University of Georgia. In Georgia, he began to use a bricklayer's trowel on his canvases, creating a textured appearance within his already visually active paintings. The figures often seen in his paintings are abstract and inspired by the masks and sculptures of Nigeria. These Nigerian arts have also inspired Jarrell's totem sculptures. Living and working in Cleveland, Jarrell continues to explore the contemporary African American experience through his paintings, sculptures, and prints. His work is found in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, High Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the University of Delaware.
Personal life
Early life
Jarrell was born in Albany, Georgia, in 1929 to Solomon Marcus and Tabitha Jarrell. Named after the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he was the youngest of six children. A year after Jarrell's birth the family moved to a 28-acre farm near Athens, Georgia, where they grew vegetables and cotton. Jarrell's father was a carpenter and furniture maker who had his own business, the S.M. Jarrell Furniture Store. All three Jarrell boys worked there, one of them learning to cane chairs. Their father's artistic ability and mother's skill as a quilt-maker contributed to the entire family's love for art. As a child, Jarrell first attended a one-room schoolhouse where he was encouraged by his teacher, Jessie Lois Hall, to explore his artistic side. He then went to a private Baptist school starting in the seventh grade before transferring to Athens High in the tenth grade. In high school his talent for art was apparent as he started creating his own comic strip, cartoons for the school paper, and illustrations for sports events, finally taking up oil painting. As a young man interested in art during the late 1930s and early 1940s he learned about painting and illustration through magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. Unable to figure out the distinction between illustration and painting, Jarrell thought "artists eventually got rich – but it was illustrators making the large sums of money."
Jarrell's relationship with his mother became closer once his father and one of his brothers left to work at a shipyard during World War II. His father died of malaria while working there. While in high school, Jarrell helped his mother tend the farm, but did not like the work. After graduating from high school, he joined the Army, was stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana and served briefly in Korea. At Fort Polk he became company artist and made extra money designing shirts and making paintings for fellow soldiers.