Alma Thomas: An Artist for Our Times at D.c.’s American Art Museum
IN THE MID-1960S, when America’s streets were filled with anti-war protesters, Civil Rights marchers, and demands for Black Power, Alma Thomas had just retired from teaching and was launching her career as a full-time painter. Ignoring pressure from Black activists, she refused to be type-cast as a race artist, and instead painted canvases of vibrant colors that expressed her exuberant spirit. What a presence she must’ve been in the classroom!
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., has just opened an exhibition showcasing Alma Thomas’s later-life art. Curated by SAAM’s Curator of 20th Century Modern Art, Melissa Ho, “Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas” conveys how –despite the politically-charged 1960s & 70s–her art celebrated the recuperative power of beauty. The museum has the largest collection of Thomas’s works—26 works on canvas, and three on paper–and Ho decided our polarized times (notably the climate crisis) needed the antidote of her art that captures the connection we all have to Nature and beauty.
Right: Alma Thomas, Atmospheric Effects I, 1970, acrylic and pencil on paper, sheet: 22 1/8 x 30 3/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1976.140.3
Curator Ho has organized the exhibition around three of Alma Thomas’s favorite themes–“Space,” “Earth/Seasons,” and “Music.” In the first of the three exhibit galleries, “Space” is the focus. It may seem a surprising theme for a woman born in 1891, but Thomas said she had no desire to remain in what she called those “horse and buggy days.” She consciously oriented herself to the future, embracing the technological and social changes of the 20th century. Her mantra was a belief in “a new art representing a new era,” and she was particularly fascinated by the Apollo mission from 1968 to 1972. Her paintings in these years were inspired by Apollo events she saw on television, and such momentous photographs of Earth taken from space as “Earthrise.” She thought of Space as a place beyond conflict, once saying “I’d love to be on the moon to feel beauty, vastness, and purity. Nothing there that was destroyed by man, no war.” (Exhibit label)
Her painting “Snoopy–Early Sun Display on Earth”(1970) captures Thomas’s reverence for the beauty of living things expanding to a planetary scale. Here, astronaut accounts of seeing Earth from “Snoopy” (the nickname for the Apollo 8 lunar module) inspired her portrayal of a rainbow-hued planet pulsating with light and vitality.
Alma Thomas, The Eclipse, 1970, acrylic on canvas, 62 × 49 3/4 in, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1978.40.3
“The Eclipse” (1970) was the final work she created in her “Space” series, and was sparked by the total solar eclipse she witnessed on March 7, 1970. Her painting captures a rare moment of celestial alignment as the moon blocks the view of the sun from the Earth and allows the sun’s corona to become visible.
In Gallery 2, the theme is “Earth and the Seasons.” Thomas, who lived in Washington, DC, described how “The seasons, the flowers, the sea–all of nature–have become a permanent part of my paintings.” Her art in this section reflects the shifting hues, sounds, and atmosphere of the seasons she experienced, often by looking out her kitchen window, or by strolling through the city’s gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, the National Arboretum, and the U.S. Botanic Garden. Her paintings of the seasons express the smell of fresh cut grass, the warmth of sunny days, the fiery colors of fall, and the hush following a snowfall. (exhibit label) One of these paintings, “Light Blue Nursery”, was the first painting the museum acquired, in 1970. Of these nature paintings, Thomas said she never painted outdoors, but wandered through various gardens and settings to “get impressions.” She said, “I just go and look.” “Looking” settled her, and later she would paint what her eyes had seen.
In Gallery 3, the theme is “Music and Nature.” Thomas once described music’s interconnection with Nature, saying “I would wade in the brook and when it rained you could hear music. I would fall on the grass and look at the poplar trees and the lovely yellow leaves would whistle.” (Exhibit label) She loved music and listened to music as she painted—including the soundtrack for “2001: A Space Odyssey” when she was working on her Space artwork.
Left: Alma Thomas, White Roses Sing and Sing, 1976, acrylic on canvas, 72 1/2 x 52 3/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.3
The paintings in this gallery are among Thomas’s last works (she died in 1978), and as Curator Melissa Ho notes, they are “among her boldest and freest. In the mid-1970s, she moved … to create complex mosaic like compositions using irregular shapes she described as her ‘hieroglyphs.'” (Exhibit label) “White Roses Sing and Sing”(1978) evokes the natural world captured by translucent pale forms floating over a background of shifting green and yellow. In “Elysian Fields” (1973), wedge-like forms are united by a strong brilliant blue, and convey how in Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields were a utopian afterlife reserved for virtuous souls.
The popularity of Alma Thomas today somehow suits our mood, but it also reflects how people look at art in the 21st century. Today’s curators are embracing the idea of “slow art”–the notion that people should engage and experience art slowly and on their own terms. Gone are the postwar days when art critics like Clement Greenberg dictated rankings of artists and stridently proclaimed what art was worth seeing.
Right: Alma Thomas. Photo copyright Michael Fisher (1976). Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum
When I went through the Alma Thomas exhibition, it was filled with people cheerfully chatting about her work. They were not guided by any art czar’s proclamations about whose art was “important.” Instead, they were enjoying Thomas’s exuberant art as a welcome antidote to the angry polarization drenching 21st century life. The importance of beauty that guided Alma Thomas’s life touched all of us as we viewed her art. She made us smile.
By Amy Henderson, Senior Contributing Editor
COMPOSING COLOR: PAINTINGS BY ALMA THOMAS” will be at the Smithsonian American Art Museum until June 2, 2024.