Karamu Artists Inc.

Karamu House in Cleveland has been recognized worldwide as one of the most influential Black theaters in the country since its founding in 1915. Less known today is the groundbreaking role that printmaking played at Karamu beginning in the 1930s. At the time, the institution was home to a graphic arts workshop where artists and community members alike, including a young Langston Hughes, could experiment and reconsider what art making could be. 

The artists who worked at Karamu House during the 1930s and 1940s—including Hughie Lee-Smith, Charles L. Sallée, and William E. Smith—are today counted among the best-known Black printmakers of their time. Surprisingly, Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community is the first exhibition to consider their artworks within a broader national context, such as the Works Progress Administration and the Harlem Renaissance. Opening this month, the show presents more than 60 prints from the museum’s holdings and important local and national collections. Together, these works highlight the innovative use of printmaking at Karamu House during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the ways in which artists there used these processes to create transformative images of Black experiences.

The artists featured in the upcoming exhibition each began their careers at Karamu and came together formally in 1940 under the name Karamu Artists Inc. Members had established their reputations at the CMA’s May Show—an annual display of regional contemporary art—and aimed to leverage these accomplishments into national renown. Smith’s Mother and Baby, for example, was the first work by a Black artist acquired by the museum. It was a gift of the Print Club of Cleveland following the work’s success in the 1937 May Show. Each member of Karamu Artists Inc. used printmaking to represent subjects drawn from their daily lives that were easily relatable to viewers—such as Sallée’s Swingtime, which places the viewer among the crowded tables of Cleveland’s Cedar Gardens, a nightclub known for its inclusivity. 

Linocut—a technique that involves carving a soft linoleum plate with a gouge before inking and printing it—was an especially popular technique at Karamu House, thanks to its portability and accessibility. Other processes like lithography and etching were also widely used by the group following the establishment in Cleveland of a graphic arts workshop by the US government’s Federal Art Project. One of only five such establishments in the country, the center provided commercial and fine artists with materials, equipment, and training needed to make prints during the financial strife of the Great Depression. Lee-Smith took particular advantage of these resources, making works like his Artist’s Life series that combine recognizable and fantastic imagery to convey his experiences as a Black artist.

Although the collaborative work of Karamu Artists Inc. informally ceased during the 1940s when several members served in World War II, the exhibition showcases works by later printmakers who were inspired by the first generation of Karamu artists. Beginning in the 1960s, the institution’s exhibition galleries hosted celebrated Black artists including Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Gordon Parks, and Hale Woodruff. Printmaking continued to feature in this programming, due in part to Karamu’s historic role in bringing together the members of Karamu Artists Inc. Nelson Stevens created his vividly colored screenprint Primal Force—featuring a figure boldly gazing forward—as a member of AfriCOBRA, a Chicago-based collective whose goal was Black empowerment. Stevens had originally explored printmaking after spending formative years teaching and lecturing at Karamu. About a decade later, Curlee Raven Holton frequented Karamu as a young man and was influenced by Sallée and Lee-Smith. Drawn to their work, in 1987 he made his first lithograph, White Terms, evoking a crowd of reaching figures to convey his experiences of racial inequity. 

Karamu Artists Inc. is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication with essays by preeminent scholars of Black art history who delve into the legacy of Karamu House as a central site for visual art. The book also includes an interview with Holton on his experiences working at Karamu’s studio program and a catalogue raisonné, which presents the widely varied prints—previously little documented—that were created by members of Karamu Artists Inc. Together, the publication and the exhibition illuminate and recontextualize an extraordinary moment in the history of a Cleveland institution whose support of Black collective creativity extends both locally and internationally