Eldzier Cortor (January 10, 1916 – November 26, 2015) was an American artist and printmaker. His work typically features elongated nude figures in intimate settings, influenced by both traditional African art and European surrealism. He is known for his style of realism that makes accurate depictions of poor, Black living conditions look fantastic as he distorts perspective.
Cortor was born on January 10, 1916, in Richmond, Virginia, to John and Ophelia Cortor. His family moved to Chicago when Cortor was about a year old, eventually settling in that city's South Side, where Cortor attended Englewood High School. His family was a part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the industrial North. Fellow students at Englewood included the African-American artists Charles Wilbert White and Margaret Burroughs. Cortor attended the Art Institute of Chicago, along with artist Gus Nall, gaining a degree in 1936. While at the Art Institute, he studied its collections extensively and grew an appreciation for traditions of Western Painting. Studying the African sculptures at an exhibit at the Field Museum transformed his work. He said "That was the most important influence in all my work, for to this day you will find in my handling of the human figure that cylindrical and lyrical quality I was taught...to appreciate in African art."
Growing up, Cortor was an avid reader of the Chicago Defender, which was a popular newspaper that focused on celebrating the successes of African Americans. He also had success in white publications and was featured in the Chicago Tribune in 1939 due to his involvement in the South Side Community Art Center. This is ultimately translated into the main thematic focus of his artwork, which is to portray African Americans in a positive light and highlight their beauty and achievements. For the majority of his career, Cortor played with different representations of the black female figure and how to represent her strength and beauty. Cortor saw Black women as the carriers of Black culture. His style is often described as experimenting with black physiognomy while infusing it with surrealism.
In 1940, Cortor worked with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), where he drew scenes of Depression-era Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Cortor often painted intimate scenes of the home. These surreal works emphasis the subject's role in society and relationship to the outer world. In 1949, he studied in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and taught at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince from 1949 to 1951.
In 1944 and 1945, Cortor won the Julius Rosenwald Foundation Fellowships consecutively, which allowed him to travel to the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. The Gullah people resided in these islands and Cortor was particularly interested in this area because of how untouched their culture had been by white people and American culture. In this regard, he decided to explore a different African diasporic culture that had more African elements prevalent overall in their culture. He spent two years living on the islands and immersed himself into the Gullah culture. "As a Negro artist I have been particularly concerned with painting Negro racial types not only as such but in connection with particular problems in color, design and composition…I have felt an especial interest in…painting Negroes whose cultural traditions had been only slightly influenced by whites…I should like to…paint a series of pictures which would reflect the particular physical and racial characteristics of the Gullahs." Cortor incorporated hints of traditional Africanisms within his art during his stay at the Gullah Islands. He would paint individuals with elongated necks, arms, legs, and faces. This elongation was a tribute to traditional African sculptures which often incorporated this elongation. Cortor through his time with the Gullah people, became passionate about the beauty of African Women, which he referenced in many of his paintings. He painted black women in a way to encapsulate their beauty, he wanted to bring light to the beauty of black women. He went against the beauty standards of his, as white, Eurocentric standards were the standard. Cortor rebelled against this standard, as he painted black women in a surrealistic style, surrealism being very common is Europe, this showed deep skin tones are just as beautiful as white skin tones. He painted black woman as he believed the black woman represented the black race as a whole he once stated, "“The Black woman represents the Black race. She is the Black spirit. She conveys a feeling of eternity and a continuance of life.”"
Through Cortor's life his style varied wildly, he shifted from surrealism to print making and many other mediums. This changed in style could be attributed to the many places he traveled to and the vastly differing experiences he had. As well as to his desire to always learn new techniques and styles from the places he visited. Cortor expressed in an interview through Bomb Magazine, that he often enjoyed changing his art style, and that he was proud of how his art style had evolved and shifted over the course of his very lengthy career. When an artists begins creating works in childhood and continues through their entire life it is highly likely the art style would change.
Eldzier Cortor died on November 26, 2015, aged 99.
Cortor was one of the first African-American artists to make African-American women his dominant theme, explaining, "the Black woman represents the Black race, continuance of life." His treatment of women has been criticized, for instance in a 1985 article in Art, which described the figure in Southern Gate (1942–43) as, "Stripped of integrity and reduced to a mere object…" According to Adrienne Childs, Cortor's Cuban Souvenir "presents an exoticized black woman whose red dress, red lips…evoke the stereotypical notion of the Latin female sexuality." (Childs 1998: 122).
Melvin Edwards mentions Cortor as an example of an African-American artist influenced by surrealism, "who often uses the female figure in a surreal interior and exterior environment."
Cortor is considered to be the first African American artists to depict nude women as the central theme of his work. This was an unpopular choice for many artists at the time as a reaction to the dominant European and American cultural landscape at the time (Farrington 2004: 20). This was also unfavored because of the historical legacy of the sexual exploitation of black women during slavery. Cortor refutes these notions by showing the nude black female body as a source of strength. Cortor also believed that the black woman conveys a sense of eternity and continuance of life (Jennings 1988:, 47). An example of this is Cortor's famous painting named Southern Gate, which is illustrated in Figure 2. The central figure to this painting is a young, naked black woman. The background of the painting is very dark; the gate is in ruins and the clouds are indicative of a storm. Immediately behind the woman, there are less clouds and more light, which illuminates her figure. The woman also has a flower in her hair and a bird on her shoulder, perhaps indicating the dawn of a new day. The figure in the painting stands stall, giving an overall sense of a triumphant figure still standing throughout the crumbling ruins and the resilience of black women in general (Dallow 2004:98).
Cortor's 1948 work The Room No. VI was produced after Cortor's time at the WPA creating portraits of people in Bronzeville. Cortor wanted to depict the living conditions in these poor, Black areas of Chicago in a way that was not exploitative of their poverty. The figures in the work have long, exaggerated bodies reminiscent of those in Africans sculpture. While these bodies are very thin with visible ribs, this sign of poverty adds to the graceful lines of the work. Cortor conveys the small size of the room through flattening the image and placing objects almost on top of on another with conflicting lines of perspective. These clashing patterns evoke the African American quilting tradition which continues Cortor's dedication to depicting the beauty of Black culture. The four bodies create circular eye movement around the work. The vertical lines of the figures, wall paper, and wood-stove are contrasted by diagonal floor boards and horizontal patterns. This composition confuses the viewer's sense of space which adds a surreal quality to the piece. This painting depicts poverty without demanding the viewer's pity and gives its subject dignity and grace.