This painting is typical of Ringgold’s early style, with a flat, hard-edged technique. The Faith Ringgold self-portrait presents the artist in a determined fashion, with folded arms and a firm gaze. The gesture manages to appear both guarded and gentle.
The first series of Faith Ringgold quilts was The Slave Rape Series which presented an African woman’s experiences of being captured and sold into slavery. Ringgold collaborated on this piece with her mother.
In 1930, Faith Ringgold was born to a family of five in Harlem. Growing up during the Harlem Renaissance, Ringgold was exposed to all the cultural offerings of this vibrant yet poverty-stricken New York neighborhood. As a child, Ringgold had asthma, so she spent much of her time inside with her mother.
After completing her degree, Ringgold began painting in the 1950s. These early works feature flat shapes and figures. Ringgold found inspiration in the styles of Cubism, Impressionism, and African art. While Ringgold did receive a lot of attention for these early paintings, the highly political messages made them difficult to sell.
This painting is typical of Ringgold’s early style, with a flat, hard-edged technique.
Faith Ringgold, a sculptor, performer, teacher, and writer, has been a front-runner in political activism throughout her life. From her American People Series, which presented the civil rights movement from the perspective of black women to the Slave Rape series, Ringgold has confronted the oppressive forces of American society head-on. Find out more about this artist below as we present this Faith Ringgold Biography.
After a failed attempt to publish her autobiography, Ringgold began to use quilting as a method of telling her story. The Echoes of Harlem quilt was the first in this series. Ringgold went on to create numerous quilts, some with text narratives included. Perhaps the most famous Faith Ringgold quilt is Tar Beach, the first part of the Woman on a Bridge s eries, completed in 1988.
In the early 1970s, Ringgold began to experiment with new mediums, particularly fabric. For Ringgold, using fabric was a way to break free from the European and western artistic tradition that was painting. In 1972, Ringgold and her daughter visited Europe. Ringgold’s daughter, Michele, went to Spain to visit some friends, and Ringgold went to the Netherlands and Germany. While in Amsterdam, Ringgold had a profound experience at the Rijksmuseum, which inspired much of her later work.
From her children’s books to her confronting paintings, Ringgold represents the power of art in activism.
The duality of many of Ringgold’s sculpted masks made the transition from sculpture to performance art a natural one. Performance art pieces were abundant during the 1960s and 70s, but this is not where Ringgold found inspiration. Instead, Ringgold looked to the African traditions of combining dance, costumes, music, masks, and storytelling.
Following her divorce, Ringgold traveled throughout Europe in the early 1960s. During the 1960s, Ringgold also began to create her first series of political paintings, American People Series (1963-1967). The decade of 1960 to 1970 also saw Ringgold host her first two individual exhibitions in New York at the Spectrum Gallery.