Malvin Gray Johnson was born in Greensboro, NC January 28, 1896, and died October 4,1934 in New York City 1934.

Johnson started creating artwork as a child. His first drawing lesson was given to him by his sister Maggie, after which he started creating paintings for the local annual fair. At eleven years old, Johnson made New Year’s calendars and sold them to his community.[1]

Johnson left for art school in New York at the age of sixteen, and worked as a janitor and clerk to make ends meet. In 1916, he entered the National Academy of Design, but soon had to leave for military duty in France during World War I.[2] After the war, Johnson returned to New York and re-entered the National Academy of Design in 1923.
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Top left: Photograph included in HARMON FOUNDATION’S 1935 EXHIBITION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN FINE ART WITH RARE INVITATION; Top right: Self-Portrait, 1934; Bottom left: Thinning Corn, 1934; Bottom right: Brothers, 1934.
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During this period, the Harlem Renaissance was really flourishing. In 1925, Johnson participated in an exhibition with the Society of Independent Artists at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in which progressive artists exhibited their work.[3] Between the years of 1927 and 1931, Johnson represented African American spirituals in nine known oil paintings. In 1928, Johnson created his best-known painting, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which launched his career and earned him the $250 Otto H. Khan prize from the Harmon Foundation.

In 1932, Johnson sold his painting, Negress, to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Also at this time, the Musical Art Forum of Orange, New Jersey obtained the largest acquisition of Johnson’s work, and Johnson created his work titled Negro Maks, which was gifted to the Hampton University Museum in Hampton, Virginia by the Harmon Foundation.[4]

Johnson later participated in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), in 1934. During this year he created a Self-Portrait, which can be found at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC alongside another work titled, Brothers. Both pieces were gifted by the Harmon Foundation which recognized African American achievements in many fields such as literature, art, and music. Johnson showed his work in Harmon Foundation exhibitions for several years.

Later in 1934 Johnson traveled to Brightwood, Virginia to paint African American subjects, as well as landscapes. During his visit he finished fifteen oil paintings and eighteen watercolor drawings. Among the first of his landscape paintings was his work, Untitled (Red Road), which represented social relationships. This work was meant to evoke those images in small southern communities. After returning to New York, Johnson died on October 24, 1934 due to heart failure at the age of thirty-eight.

Johnson had become a rising star in the 1920s and ’30s during the Harlem Renaissance, and even had one of his paintings reproduced on the cover of Art Digest. However, due to his early death in 1934, his work started to fall into obscurity.[5] His paintings would come to be appreciated again years after his death, and many of his works are now located in museums, private collections, and in historically black universities.

Footnotes:

[1] McLaughlin, Nancy. “These Triad Residents Made Black History, Too.” Greensboro News & Record, February 27, 2018. Accessed June 30, 2020. https://www.greensboro.com/news/local_news/these-triad-residents-made-black-history-too/article_ef28ad40-7ee4-5220-8291-0246236310a4.html.

[2] DeCwikiel-Kane, Dawn. “Malvin Gray Johnson, An Artist Born and Raised in Greensboro, Receives New Attention Decades After His Death in 1934.” Greensboro News & Record, January 26, 2015. Accessed June 30, 2020. https://greensboro.com/life/malvin-gray-johnson-an-artist-born-and-raised-in-greensboro-receives-new-attention-decades-after/article_e96cdf59-a583-5e70-a611-3377402caa4f.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] McLaughlin, Nancy. “These Triad Residents Made Black History, Too.”
Source: Illustration History dot org
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In addition to his paintings, Johnson was also a talented illustrator and printmaker. He contributed illustrations to several publications, including The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP. His work as an illustrator allowed him to reach a wider audience and further contribute to the cultural and artistic movement of the Harlem Renaissance.

Johnson’s work is characterized by vibrant colors, bold shapes, and a focus on the African American experience. He often depicted scenes of everyday life in Harlem, capturing the energy and spirit of the community. His paintings are known for their powerful and emotive portrayal of the human figure, as well as their use of symbolism and abstraction.

Despite his talent and contributions to the art world, Johnson faced many challenges as an African American artist during a time of widespread racism and discrimination. He struggled to gain recognition and support for his work and faced barriers to exhibiting in mainstream galleries and institutions. However, he remained dedicated to his craft and continued to create powerful and impactful art throughout his career.

Tragically, Johnson’s life was cut short when he passed away at the young age of 38 in 1934. Despite his untimely death, his legacy lives on through his art and his impact on the Harlem Renaissance. His work continues to be celebrated and studied for its contribution to African American art history and its representation of the cultural and social landscape of the time. In recognition of his lasting impact, Johnson’s work has been featured in major exhibitions and collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His influence on subsequent generations of African American artists cannot be overstated, as he paved the way for future generations to express themselves through art and contribute to the ongoing dialogue about race, identity, and culture.

Malvin Gray Johnson’s legacy as an artist and advocate for African American representation in the arts remains an important part of American art history. His bold and expressive paintings continue to inspire and resonate with audiences today, ensuring that his impact will be felt for generations to come.
Source: Samepassage dotorg
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Early Life and Education
Gray Johnson began painting at an early age when his sister Maggie noticed his talent and gave him drawing lessons and art supplies when he was a child. His early talent led him to win first place for his artworks in contests in his hometown's annual fairs.[2]

His family later moved to New York City, where he studied art at the National Academy of Design with notable contemporary artists such as Francis Coates Jones.[3] His time in school was interrupted by World War I where he served in the 184th Brigade, 94th Division in France.[4] He rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. He was "the youngest member of the Harlem Renaissance artists...migrated to New York with his family at an early age...where he was influenced by French Impressionism and Cubism."[5]

Career
Malvin "was one of the most far-reaching and versatile artists of his period. He drew upon many stylistic sources and demonstrated the disciplined learning necessary for high levels of creative expression...as he became familiar with the works of the Impressionists and the Cubists his artistic style changed."[6] He is described as an artist "whose work reflects the complexities of the Harlem Renaissance at its pinnacle" despite spending little time with other African American artists during his time in Harlem.[3][7]

His work is often labeled as Symbolic Abstractionist, being one of the first African-American artists to paint in the Cubist style.[8] He combined early modern styles with distinctly African American subjects, themes, and concerns to create "truly African American art.[3] Elements of his art seem also to derive from studies of African sculpture, Harlem street life, and African Spirituals.

He concerned himself with technical aspects of light, composition, and form, and a desire to express the experience of the spirituals in terms of abstract symbolism. His painting style is described as a modernist-inspired with vigorous brushwork, intense areas of color, flattened and angular forms, and a lack of painterly finish. Some of his critics admired how he explored African American subjects with authenticity and sincerity while others admonished his loose handling of paint and modernist sensibility.[3]

Like many other artists, Johnson worked on the Federal Arts Project during the Depression. His work was displayed in many of the Harmon Exhibits in 1929 and the early thirties. In 1931 some of his work was hung in the Anderson gallery and the following year, the Salon of America displayed several of his paintings. In 1928 he won a prize at a Harmon exhibition, and in 1929 he won the Otto H. Kahn prize of 250 dollars for painting.[9][10] "Johnson's painting 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' was awarded the 1929 exhibition prize for best picture in the second Harmon group show."[11]

Johnson was featured in the 1930s film A Study of Negro Artists, along with Richmond Barthé, James Latimer Allen, Palmer Hayden, Aaron Douglas, William Ellisworth Artis, Augusta Savage, Lois Mailou Jones, Georgette Seabrooke, and others associated with the Harlem Renaissance.[12][13]

In 1934, under his Public Works of Art Project contract, Johnson produced a group of works portraying urban and rural blacks, many of which were set in Brightwood, Virginia. The collection included 14 oils and 15 watercolors. Johnson would give an extensive dictation of his pieces the Harmon Foundation, which is on record at the Library of Congress. These paintings from his final year of life are considered some of his finest works. These pieces were set to be displayed in an exhibition at the Delphic Studios Gallery in New York at the end of the year.[14]

In The Negro in American Culture, Margaret Just Butcher, argued that some of Johnson's paintings "are among the most significant commentaries on the American Negro scene." Alain LeRoy Locke said that Johnson captured the cynical humor and mythical desolation in the moods of blacks better than most artists. Viewing Johnson as a maturing experimentalist, James A. Porter wrote that his later work was expressed in terse, pregnant patches of color.[15][16]

The exhibition of his oils, watercolors and drawings in 2002 at North Carolina Central University was the first since his death in 1934.[4]

Auction Records
On February 23, 2010, Swann Galleries auctioned Malvin Gray Johnson's celebrated painting Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, oil on canvas, 1928–29, for $228,000. It was the first time any significant work by Johnson had come to auction.

Works
Meditation, 1931
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, 1929
Woman Washing
Negro masks, 1932
Arrangement, 1933
Toussaint L'Ouverture, 1933
Harmony, 1933
Sailor, 1933
Nat Turner, 1934
Postman, 1934
Negro soldier, 1934
Self-Portrait, 1934
Brothers, 1934
The Elks
Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass
Negro Pharaoh—Eighteenth Dynasty
Roll, Jordan, Roll, 1930
Dixie Madonna
Ruby
Red Road
Convict Labor
Booker T. Washington (lost)[17]

Bibliography
Margaret Just Butcher, The Negro in American Culture, New York: Knopf, 1972. ISBN 0-394-47943-2
Mary Ann Calo, Distinction and Denial: Race, Nation and the Critical Construction of the African American Artist, 1920–40, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.
Jacqueline Francis, Climbing up the Mountain: the Modern Art of Malvin Gray Johnson, Durham NC: North Carolina Central University Art Museum, 2002.
Alain LeRoy Locke, Negro Art: Past and Present, Washington DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936.
James Amos Porter, Modern Negro Art, New York: Dryden Press, 1943.

Source: Wikipedia