60 Facts About Edna Manley

Edna Manley was known primarily as a sculptor, although her oeuvre included significant drawings and paintings.

Edna Manley was an early supporter of art education in Jamaica and in the 1940s, she organised and taught art classes at the Junior Centre of the Institute of Jamaica.

Edna Manley was the wife of Norman Manley, the founder of the Jamaican People's National Party and the 1st Premier of Jamaica.

Edna Manley is often considered the "mother of Jamaican art".

Edna Manley's father died when she was nine, leaving his widow to raise all their nine children by herself.

Edna Manley was described as incredibly independent, rebellious and spirited, exemplified in the uproar and unrest she caused among her own family as she embraced her 'coloured' ancestry from her mother's side.

Edna Manley quickly realized how different the Jamaican middle class was in comparison to the life she knew in England and kept journals of her thoughts, observations, and experiences.

Edna Manley did not fight outright for new wave feminism, but her excellence, notoriety and dominance in the predominantly male world of visual arts, fought in their way.

Edna Manley shared that 'after Norman died, the thing that saved me was my art.

Edna Manley maintained her own identity and did not live in the shadow of her famous husband.

Edna Manley died on 2 February 1987; a few weeks short of her 87th birthday.

Edna Manley was an amazing woman in the eyes of many; a woman who carved her path independent of the name of her husband or son and continues to influence and inspire many artists to this day.

Edna Manley created her first Jamaican work that would go onto be one of her most notable, The Beadseller.

Edna Manley began moving away from the academic ways of creating that she was so accustomed to, into a truer version of modernism seen in The Beadseller- inspired by these new and exciting observations of life in Jamaica.

Edna Manley was not safe from his influence as she studied all the art trends and ideas circulating in Europe before her departure to the Caribbean.

Edna Manley brought plaster versions of both these works back to England with her in 1923, which she had cast into bronze on her arrival.

Edna Manley would continue to go between Jamaica and England seeking out exhibition spaces and artistic inspiration.

Between 1925 and 1929, Edna Manley softened some of her geometric forms, replacing them with more massive, rounded ones.

Edna Manley tamed her early-1920s cubist lines with rounder forms, and produced a new, definitive style that lasted into the 1940s.

Edna Manley recalled the strong influence of classical art on her voluptuous sculptures.

Wayne Brown has described the sculpture as "woman startled to look over her shoulder" an "image of nakedness surprised" yet, Edna Manley seemed had removed all traces of expression from the face of the sculpture of her re-interpretation of Eve and instead focused the expressions into the pose of the figure.

Edna Manley's move to Jamaica had a profound impact on her work.

Edna Manley abandoned studying zoology back in London, and her work took on a more "inspired formal elegance", according to Boxer.

Edna Manley's works were exhibited very frequently in England between 1927 and 1980.

Edna Manley was one of the founders of the new Jamaica School of Art.

Edna and Norman Manley were putting down roots in Jamaica and each was easing into their respective careers with notability.

Edna's fledgling art career was taking off and Norman Manley was earning a reputation of being an astute lawyer.

Cubism and other avant-garde movements dominated Europe at the time, but Edna Manley's pieces had an air of freshness to them which sparked countless curiosity all over London.

Edna Manley seems to be communicating anguish while looking towards the heavens for a solution or the dawning of a better tomorrow.

Edna Manley's opened palms are affixed one in front of the other similar to when person is waking up and stretching after a deep sleep.

Edna Manley's seemed to be that gauging mirror absorbing and reflecting the plight of the common people through her newfound aesthetic.

Later that same year Mrs Edna Manley got sick and spent a lengthy time recuperating.

The Peoples National Party was formed by Norman Edna Manley who found his political stride and true purpose which was eluding him for many years.

Edna Manley created works such as Digger, ink on paper, Dispossessed, Sepia wash on paper and many others.

Edna Manley carved Horse of the Morning in 1943, this carving was done using Guatemalan redwood.

Edna Manley promoted the development of Jamaican art as a teacher, coordinator and patron and contributed in the founding of the Jamaica school of art and craft in 1950.

Edna Manley had recognized a home on the north coast of the island.

Edna Manley did take part in tercentenary exhibition held at the institution of Jamaica in November 1955.

Edna Manley is the herald of the new Jamaica charging forth and claiming his "place in the sun".

The 1950s and 60s were deemed crucial periods in which Edna Manley's iconography was being developed.

Edna Manley was commissioned to recreate the work in bronze, at a scale three to four times that of the original.

In 1982, Edna Manley produced a third version, closer in size to the original, but it incorporated some subtle changes she had introduced in the destroyed sculpture.

Norman Edna Manley entered politics, and founded the People's National Party in 1938.

Edna Manley designed The Rising Sun logo for the People's National Party.

Edna Manley's work was heavily influenced by the nature that surrounded her at Nomdmi, the mountain retreat she had built with her husband.

Edna Manley had always been interested in Rastafari and in 1961, she made a series of drawings using young Rastafarians which served as the backbone for her carving Brother Man.

Edna Manley's husband became more involved with politics, becoming the chief minister of Jamaica in 1955.

Edna Manley held her third exhibition at the Hills Galleries in 1960, where she only showed drawings as she had very little time to make sculptures due to the opposition politics of Norman Manley and the People's National Party.

Edna Manley's works were mostly of women and having mythological concepts.

Edna Manley made numerous maquettes as her ideas constantly changed and her visions for the statue fluctuated.

When Edna Manley arrived to Morant Bay Court to put up the statue, she was met with rage from Bogle's followers wanting him alive and Edna Manley was smug with her responses yet polite.

Edna Manley returned, in her personal carvings, to the animal sculptures that she did as a young woman.

Norman Edna Manley became ill in August 1968 with a respiratory illness, which got worse by 6 October.

Edna Manley stated, " He woke at night with his first attack of cardiac asthma".

In 1968, Edna Manley was commissioned to make a Mary where she captured emotion using geometry rather than facial expression and entitled it The Grief of Mary.

Edna Manley had helped Jamaica to achieve total independence from Britain and self-government by 1962.

Edna Manley retreated to the mountains and created "Adios," a piece interpreted as lovers in a last embrace, and "Woman," an agonized woman in reclusion.

Between 1970 and 1974 Edna Manley did two solo exhibitions, in 1971 she did one at Bolivar Gallery, Kingston with eighteen sculptures and the other in 1973 at Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, with fifteen sculptures and three drawings.

When Edna Manley died in 1987, she was accorded an official funeral and buried in the tomb of Norman Manley at the National Heroes Park, her work having earned her the unofficial title of "Mother of Jamaican Art".

Edna Manley was selected in part because of her contributions to Jamaica's art, which included co-founding the school in 1950, a school that is still the only of its kind in the English-speaking Caribbean.