Artwork Page for Sharecropper

Details / Information for Sharecropper

Sharecropper

1940

William E. Smith

(American, 1913–1997)
Culture
America, Ohio, Cleveland
Medium
linocut
Measurements
Image: 20.4 x 15.4 cm (8 1/16 x 6 1/16 in.); Sheet: 28.6 x 23.8 cm (11 1/4 x 9 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1940.76
Catalogue raisonné
Teller 18; Salsbury, Benay, and Kruse 110
Edition
10
Copyright
© William E. Smith
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

The artist wrote that he made this image hoping to “waken the people to the waste of the sharecropper system.”

Description

This print by William E. Smith was one of the first by any Black American artist to enter the CMA’s collection. It was purchased from the museum’s May Show, an annual exhibition highlighting regional contemporary art. Karamu Artists Inc. used this juried display to establish a reputation locally that they were then able to leverage into further opportunities. The praise that their prints received was widely noted at a time when Black artists were otherwise unrepresented in museums; as a critic for Cleveland’s historically Black newspaper, the Call and Post, noted, “A feeling of deep racial pride was mine as I noticed the names of [members of Karamu Artists Inc. in the galleries].”
Vertically oriented black-ink print on beige paper depicting a person with dark skin tone from the waist up, right arm crossed over their chest as their shoulders hunch, other arm hanging down. They tilt their head down, eyes narrowed and looking up and out. They wear a loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt, have tightly coiled hair cropped closed to the scalp, with the right side of their face bathed in light and the right cast in shadow.

Sharecropper

1940

William E. Smith

(American, 1913–1997)
America, Ohio, Cleveland

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