Claude Clark
1915–2001 · African American painter, printmaker and art educator
Claude Clark (Rockingham, Georgia, 1915 – Oakland, California, 2001) was an American painter, printmaker and art educator. His work focuses on the African American diaspora, with dance scenes, street urchins, marine life, landscapes, and religious and political satire, mostly executed with a palette knife. He matters for combining a sustained painting career with a commitment to teaching and to Black art history.
Born on a tenant farm, he moved with his parents to Philadelphia in 1923, during the Great Migration. He studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from 1935 to 1939 and then at the Barnes Foundation, where he came across Van Gogh's work. Its thick, creamy paint and loose handling shaped his approach to drawing and painting. He worked for the WPA and taught in Philadelphia and at Talladega College in Alabama before settling in California, where he earned his degree and taught at Merritt College until retiring.
His legacy is tied to the Black West Coast Arts Movement, where he helped develop one of the first African American Studies curricula, and to his work as a mentor to younger artists and scholars.