Margo Humphrey

External video
Margo Humphrey pt.1: Our Common Bond Artists Talk, "I am Precious" Myrtis Bedolla on YouTube, 9:37
Margo Humphrey pt.2: Our Common Bond Artists Talk, "My mother planted all kinds of flowers" Myrtis Bedolla on YouTube, 10:45

She was born in Oakland, California on June 25, 1942.[5] She attended the Oakland Public Schools and graduated in 1960 from Oakland High School as an art major. After earning her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the California College of Arts and Crafts, she attended Stanford University Graduate School earning a Masters of Fine Arts degree with Honors in Printmaking in 1974.[6]

She began teaching in 1973 at the University of California Santa Cruz and has since taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the San Francisco Art Institute, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also taught at the University of the South Pacific at Suva, Fiji;[6][7] Yaba Technological Institute of Fine Art, Ekoi Island, Nigeria;[8] the University of Benin in Benin City, Nigeria;[5] the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Art in Kampala, Uganda, and the Fine Art School of the National Gallery of Art, Harare, Zimbabwe.[6] She is currently the Department Head of Printmaking the University of Maryland in College Park.[6][9]

Humphrey has worked in media such as lithography, monoprint, woodcut, etching and drawing. She is particularly respected for her work in lithography, a field which is highly technical and traditionally seen as male dominated. Many of her works are informed by the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Humphrey has worked with significant printmaking ateliers including the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop[1] and the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico.[9] She was one of the earliest African-American woman artists to be recognized for lithographic works[1] and the first to have her prints published by Tamarind, in 1974.[5]

Her lithographs tell personal stories using a figurative style that combines autobiography with fantasy.[4] Through a personal iconography of everyday objects, she illuminates her experiences as an African American woman.[4] She developed her work The Last Bar-B-Que, a vividly colored transformation of the Last Supper, following a three-year period during which she examined portrayals by artists from Pietro Lorenzetti to Emil Nolde.[3] The Last Bar-B-Que is considered one of American visual culture's iconic images.[1]

She has also published a children's book, The River that gave gifts (1987).[10]

Humphrey's first solo exhibition occurred in 1965.[4] Since then, Humphrey's works have been exhibited internationally, and are held in major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hampton University Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,[1] the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos.[8] In 1996, she was invited to be part of the World Printmaking Survey at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY.[11]

Her Story: Margo Humphrey Lithographs and Works on Paper (2011) at the Hampton University Museum, is a 45-year retrospective of her work, curated by Robert E. Steele and Adrienne L. Childs.[1]

Humphrey has received many awards and honors including:

• The James D. Pheland Award from the World Print Council[6][12]
• National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships, 1988[5]
• Ford Foundation Fellowship, 1981[5]
• Tiffany Fellowships, 1988[5]
• Teaching Fellowships from the United States Information Agency Arts America Program[6]

• Childs, Adrienne L. (2009). Margo Humphrey. Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications. ISBN 978-0764950698.