32 Facts About Eldzier Cortor

Eldzier Cortor was an African-American artist and printmaker.

Eldzier Cortor was born in Richmond, Virginia, to John and Ophelia Eldzier Cortor.

Eldzier Cortor's family moved to Chicago when Cortor was about a year old, eventually settling in that city's South Side, where Cortor attended Englewood High School.

Eldzier Cortor's family was a part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the industrial North.

Eldzier Cortor attended the Art Institute of Chicago, along with artist Gus Nall, gaining a degree in 1936.

Eldzier Cortor had success in white publications and was featured in the Chicago Tribune in 1939 due to his involvement in the South Side Community Art Center.

Eldzier Cortor saw Black women as the carriers of Black culture.

Eldzier Cortor's style is often described as experimenting with black physiognomy while infusing it with surrealism.

In 1944 and in 1945, Eldzier Cortor won the Julius Rosenwald Foundation Fellowships consecutively, which allowed him to travel to the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.

The Gullah people resided in these islands and Eldzier Cortor was particularly interested in this area because of how untouched their culture had been by white people and American culture.

Eldzier Cortor spent two years living on the islands and immersed himself into the Gullah culture.

Eldzier Cortor painted black women in a way to encapsulate their beauty, he wanted to bring light to the beauty of black women.

Eldzier Cortor went against the beauty standards of his, as white, Eurocentric standards were the standard.

Eldzier Cortor rebelled against this standard, as he painted black women in a surrealistic style, surrealism being very common is Europe, this showed deep skin tones are just as beautiful as white skin tones.

Eldzier Cortor conveys a feeling of eternity and a continuance of life.

Eldzier Cortor expressed in an interview through Bomb Magazine, that he often enjoyed changing his art style, and that he was proud of how his art style had evolved and shifted over the course of his very lengthy career.

Eldzier Cortor died on November 26,2015, at the age of 99 years, 10 months.

Eldzier Cortor is considered to be the first African American artists to depict nude women as the central theme of his work.

Eldzier Cortor refutes these notions by showing the nude black female body as a source of strength.

Eldzier Cortor believed that the black woman conveys a sense of eternity and continuance of life.

An example of this is Eldzier Cortor's famous painting named Southern Gate, which is illustrated in Figure 2.

Eldzier Cortor wanted to depict the living conditions in these poor, Black areas of Chicago in a way that was not exploitative of their poverty.

Eldzier Cortor conveys the small size of the room through flattening the image and placing objects almost on top of on another with conflicting lines of perspective.

Eldzier Cortor plays with her features and makes them rather elongated, which gives a sculptural feel to the subject.

Eldzier Cortor is wearing a red, yellow and green scarf which is symbolic of the Pan-African flag, which pays homage to her African roots.

Two of these prints being L'Abbatoire No III and L'Abbatoire No I Cortor mainly used the intaglio printing process, however during the 1950s made several woodblock prints with Japanese printmaker Jun'ichiro Sekino.

L'Abbatoire was made with acid to etch the designs and Eldzier Cortor used formaldehyde to prevent mold from growing on the work.

Eldzier Cortor based the imagery on a slaughterhouse that he had visited while he was there.

Eldzier Cortor exhibited in the 1938 interracial show "An Exhibition in Defense of Peace and Democracy", which was sponsored by the Chicago Artists' Group.

Eldzier Cortor contributed to the 1967 City College of New York exhibition "The Evolution of Afro-American Artists: 1800 - 1950".

In 2013 Eldzier Cortor's prints were featured in an exhibition at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Eldzier Cortor's works are held in the collections of Howard University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Art Institute of Chicago, among others.