In episode 81 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Jeffreen M. Hayes on the Harlem Renaissance pioneer, Augusta Savage!!

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Overcoming poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination, Savage is one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century and is famed for her emotionally tender and stoic life-size figures and plaster portrait busts.

Raised in a strict family in Florida with a father who opposed

her artistic pursuits, she arrived in New York with just $4.60, and in 1922 enrolled at The Cooper Union School of Art. Coming to the fore in

the 1920s, Savage mastered emotionally tender and stoic life-size figures and plaster portrait busts (painted with shoe polish for a bronzed effect), and her subjects ranged from dignified everyday Black figures to influential Harlemites, including W. E. B. Du Bois.

Working with images to elevate Black culture into mainstream America, Savage was also a key community organiser, exhibitor and teacher to so many. Not only did she become the first African American woman in the US to open her own private art gallery, she was also appointed the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center.

As confirmed by Jeffreen, who has previously said: “I don’t think about Augusta Savage as someone who only made objects … [but rather as someone who] has really left behind a blueprint of what it means to be an artist that centres humanity.”

ENJOY!

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Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic

Research assistant: Viva Ruggi

Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner

Music by Ben Wetherfield

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