Zinnias

Kathleen Blackshear shattered traditions from the very start and her individuality continued to shine throughout her life. She was the first female in her hometown to wear trousers, and went on to become first among American art historians to teach and promote non-western art. Born in the small town of Navasota in Texas, she grew up playing with the African American children who worked on her grandparents’ cotton plantation. Blackshear made friends with the children and their parents, and these relationships would inform her art for decades. She distinguished herself as one of few artists before the mid-twentieth century who depicted African Americans with aesthetic acumen and sensitivity.

She began to study art in Texas at the age of twelve, but for her undergraduate degree at Baylor University in Waco she majored not in art but in modern languages. After graduation she attended the Art Students League in New York, then beginning in 1918 spent six years travelling and exploring career options in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Europe, and Mexico. In 1924 she entered the program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, received a BFA and in 1941 matriculated with an MFA.

In addition to championing non-western art, she engaged her students with modern art—a controversial topic at that time. Her teaching was reflected in her art, as shown in this boldly colorful still life of Zinnias, painted around 1930. The perspective is unnatural; both the top of the flowers and the underside are visible, thus leaning towards a Cubist predilection. As a still life composition, Zinnias is reminiscent of the art of Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gough. The curious totemic figure on the wall to the right highlights Blackshear’s delight in non-western culture and particularly in ethnographic art. She was famous for taking her students to the Field Museum of Natural History and the Oriental Institute of Chicago. Her choice of flower, the zinnia, is likely no accident, as the flower thrives in hot, dry climates such as her native Texas.

Blackshear was not only a teacher and practicing artist, but also served as an editor for the pioneering survey book of art history, Art Through the Ages, authored by Helen Gardner, a teacher of Blackshear’s at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She continued to teach art history in Chicago until 1961, when she and her life partner, fellow-artist Ethel Speers, retired to Texas, thus her life came full circle.

Sally Metzler, Ph.D., Director of the Art Collection