Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint

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January 16 - May 20, 2018

Special Exhibitions Gallery, first floor

Philadelphia-based artist Dox Thrash (1893–1965) was both a pioneering printmaker and a noted participant in the “New Negro” movement of the 1930s and ’40s. A veteran of World War I as well as the minstrel stage, he trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before making his way to Philadelphia, where he ultimately forged a career as both a painter and a graphic artist.

 

In 1937, Thrash signed on for employment with the Federal Art Project’s Fine Print Workshop. There, while working with fellow artists Hugh Mesibov and Michael Gallagher, he began to experiment with a new approach to intaglio printmaking, which today is known as the carborundum mezzotint process. With its broad tonal range, the new process was ideally suited to the sensitive portrayals of Black life for which Thrash would become known.

 

Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint brought together numerous examples of the experimental process by Thrash and other colleagues working in the Fine Print Workshop. Also on view were works by Thrash in other print mediums, as well as watercolors and drawings, all of which powerfully documented the artist’s intimate, invested engagement with African American culture in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

 

Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art with Dolan/Maxwell.