Jeff Donaldson

Friday, February 12, 2010

AfriCOBRA founder Jeff Donaldson was born in Pine Bluff, Ark. in 1932. He received a BA in studio art from the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff in 1954, after establishing the school’s first arts major. He studied under John Howard, who had been a student of Harlem Renaissance painter Hale Woodruff and nurtured Donaldson’s interest in Afrocentric art.

Donaldson went on to complete his MFA at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1963, and a PhD in African and African American art history at Northwestern University in 1974. As a member of the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC), in 1967 Donaldson organized the visual art workshop that created Chicago’s seminal “Wall of Respect” mural, which depicted black heroes and became an iconic symbol of the black pride movement. He was instrumental in the founding of AfriCOBRA, whose mission he saw as the development of a common aesthetic creed and the impetus for a movement in which artists effected social change by making images of affirmation for the black community and fostering black pride.

Donaldson described AfriCOBRA’s aesthetic principles as “The expressive awesomeness that one experiences in African Art and life in the USA like the Holiness church… and the demon that is the blues, Alcindor’s dunk and Sayer’s cut… Summetry that is free, repetition with change, based on African music and African movement… We want the work to look like the creator made it through us… We want the things to shine, to have the rich luster of a just-washed ‘Fro, of spit-shined shoes…Color that shines… Color that defines, identifies and directs… Coolade colors for coolade images for the superreal people.” Donaldson promoted “TransAfrican” art, explaining that “African art – the art of Dogon masks, Kasai axes, goldweights – is not art of isolated objects. Everything’s together, religion and tradition, oration, dancing, song. James Brown doesn’t just stand up there and sing. You can’t see AfriCOBRA unless you’re in the struggle, unless you hear the music, unless you really know.” As a painter Donaldson participated in over 200 group and solo exhibitions internationally. He was also an educator and over the course of his career he served as a professor, art department chair and dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University. He died in February 2004.

“We hope you can dig it, it’s about you and, like Marvin Gaye says, ‘You’re what’s happening in the world today, baby.’”

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