(b Mooresville, NC, 1 Jan 1907; d New Hope, PA, 29 Aug 1995). American sculptor, teacher and writer. She initially trained as a nurse at the Women’s Medical College, NC, before studying philosophy at Columbia University, New York (1936–41). During the 1930s she became one of a few prominent black American sculptors (see AFRICAN AMERICAN ART, §2) participating in the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Projects. She also became an instructor in sculpture at the Harlem Community Art Centre and a frequent contributor to periodicals and newspapers, and she worked with Aristide Maillol in Paris and Hans Reiss (b 1885) in New York. In 1940 she was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship and in 1943–6 was director of the Student’s School of Sculpture, New York. Her sculpture is characterized by an idealistic intent in sensitively moulded stone carvings on humanistic themes, for example Lafayette and Salome, exhibited at the McMillen Galleries, New York, in November 1941. In later works the artist evoked the timeless spirit of such universal subjects as Mother and Child (1968; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.), in which the smooth surfaces of intertwined figures play against rhythmic drapery. There were major exhibitions in 1945 held at the Carlen Galleries, Philadelphia, and the McMillen Galleries and Modernage Gallery, New York. Works are held in the New York Public Library, New York Public School, Bethune College, New York, Teachers College, Winston-Salem, NC, and the Recorder of Deeds Building, Washington, DC.

• Burke, Selma Hortense
  • African American art, §2: c 1920–c 1960