Thelma Johnson Streat
1911–1959 · African American painter, dancer and educator
Thelma Johnson Streat (Yakima, Washington, 1911 or 1912 - Los Angeles, 1959) was an African American painter, dancer and educator who rose to prominence in the 1940s. She is regarded as a pioneer of modern African American art, and her work is associated with modernism and abstract expressionism.
She trained in Portland, Oregon, where she studied at the Museum Art School from 1934 to 1935. In 1938 she moved to San Francisco, where she took part in Works Progress Administration projects and assisted Diego Rivera on the mural Pan American Unity. Her best-known painting, Rabbit Man, was bought by MoMA in 1942, making her the first African American woman with a work in the museum's permanent collection.
Her murals and portraits addressed the history of people of African descent, depicting figures such as Marian Anderson and Harriet Tubman. Between 1946 and 1951 she travelled to Haiti to study dance, and her choreography blended traditions from many cultures. In Hawaii she founded, with her second husband, children's schools focused on cultural diversity. She died of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1959.