The career of Augusta Savage was fostered by the climate of the Harlem Renaissance. During the 1930s, she was well known in Harlem as a sculptor, art teacher, and community art program director. Born Augusta Christine Fells in Green Cove Springs, Florida, on February 29, 1892 Augusta, was a sculptor and educator who battled racism to secure a place for Black women in the art world. Augusta discovered as a child that she enjoyed making small sculptures and had a real talent for art. Augusta Fells began modeling figures from the red-clay soil of her native Florida at an early age. Lack of encouragement from her family and the scarcity of local clay meant that Savage did not sculpt for almost four years.
When Augusta was in high school, her teachers recognized her artistic talent. They encouraged her to study art and to work on her skills as an artist. When just 15 years old, she married John T. Moore in 1907 and had her only child, Irene, in 1908. After her husband died a few years later, Augusta moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1915. About that time she married James Savage, but she divorced him in the early 1920s and kept his name. In 1919 a local potter gave her some clay from which she modeled a group of figures that she entered in the West Palm Beach County Fair. The figures were awarded a special prize and a ribbon of honor. Encouraged by her success, Savage moved to Jacksonville, Florida.
Once she discovered a good source for clay, Savage thrived artistically in West Palm Beach, receiving local encouragement and prizes. She supported herself by sculpting portrait busts of prominent Blacks in the community. When that patronage did not materialize, Savage left her daughter in the care of her parents and moved to New York City to study art. Savage arrived in New York with $4.60, found a job as an apartment caretaker. In 1921, she enrolled at the Cooper Union School of Art, a scholarship-based school, in New York City where she was admitted in October 1921. She was selected before 142 other men on the waiting list. She completed the four-year degree course in three years.
After completing studies at Cooper Union, Savage worked in Manhattan steam laundries to support herself and her family. Her father had been paralyzed by a stroke, and the family's home destroyed by a hurricane. Her family from Florida moved into her small West 137th Street apartment. During this time, she obtained her first commission from the New York Public Library on West 135th Street, a bust of W.E.B Du Bois. Her outstanding sculpture brought more commissions, including one for a bust of Marcus Garvey. Her bust of William Pickens Sr., a key figure in the National Associationa for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earned praise for depicting an African American in a more humane, neutral way as opposed to stereotypes of the time, as did many of her works.
In 1923 Savage became the focus of a racial scandal involving the French government and the American arts community. She was among some 100 young American women selected to attend a summer program at Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts, outside Paris, France. However, Savage’s application was later refused by the French on the basis of her race. A typewritten letter from the admissions committee reads that “it would not be wise to have a colored student … as complications would arise, and the student would suffer most from these complications”. Savage was deeply upset and questioned the committee, beginning the first of many public fights for equal rights in her life by writing a letter to the New York World. Her friends and colleagues in the Harlem community helped her, such as W.E.B Du Bois, who wrote letters on her behalf to fight for her admission.
Though appeals were made to the French government to reinstate the award, they had no effect and Savage was unable to study at the school. The incident got press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, and eventually, American sculptor Hermon A. MacNeil was the only member of the committee to denounce the decision. He invited Savage to study with him in an attempt to make amends. She later cited him as one of her teachers. Also in 1923 Savage married for the third and final time, but her husband, Robert L. Poston, died the next year. Following this period, Savage worked in steam laundries to earn money to care for her family and to save for studies in Europe.
She played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance and fighting for equality for Black artists in the 1920s and 1930s. During the mid-1920s when the Harlem Renaissance was at its peak. She became part of the art world’s vibrant, tight-knit community. Savage was one of the first artists who consistently dealt with Black expression and manner. Augusta wanted to depict Black people in a more neutral and humane way and fought against the stereotypical art of the day. Her best-known work of the 1920s was Gamin, an informal bust portrait of her nephew. The boy's expression somehow captures a wisdom that only comes through hardship. Her style can be described as realistic, expressive, and sensitive. Gamin is a French word that means "Street Urchin."
The critical and commercial success of Gamin catapulted Savage’s reputation far beyond Harlem art circles. For this she was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship to study in Paris in 1929. There she studied briefly with Felix Benneteau at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière, a leading Paris school. She exhibited, and twice won awards, at the Paris Salon and at one Exposition. In France, she associated with expatriates Henry Ossawa Tanner, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen. It was here, that her artistic style developed as she worked with several respected sculptors. While she had previously produced mostly portrait busts, she expanded her portfolio to include full-bodied figures and genre subjects. After two years in Paris, Savage returned to New York.
In 1931 Savage won a second Rosenwald fellowship, which permitted her to remain in Paris for an additional year. In Paris, she also studied with the sculptor Charles Despiau. She exhibited, and twice won awards, at the Paris Salon and at one Exposition. She also received a Carnegie Foundation grant for eight months of travel in France, Belgium, and Germany. Once returning back to the states, Savage opened up her tiny Harlem apartment, turning the basement into a communal studio. Because of the Great Depression little art was being bought or sold and so when she returned to New York she began to teach art. Although she found it difficult to find paying work as a sculptor, she continued to complete some work including a bust of abolitionist Frederick Douglas.
She founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in 1932. She opened her studio to anyone who wanted to paint, draw, or sculpt. Her students included painter Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight and psychologist Kenneth B. Clark. In 1933 Savage, Georgette Seabrooke-Powell and Charles Alston, and Mary Beattie Brady, director of the Harmon Foundation, founded the Harlem Art Workshop catered to adult education. The following year she became the first African-American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. In 1934, Savage became the first Black woman elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She was president of the Harlem Artists Guild during the 1930s.
In 1937, the Harlem Community Center was built and funded by the Works Progress Administration, and Savage was elected to become its first director. 1,500 people of all ages and abilities participated in her workshops, learning from her multi-cultural staff, and showing work around New York City. Savage was then asked to create a sculpture for the 1939 New York World's Fair. She was inspired by the words of the James Weldon Johnson poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing". Her sculpture piece "Lift Every Voice and Sing (also called "The Harp") was commissioned by the 1939 New York World's Fair. Standing 16 feet tall, it displays several Black singers in graduated heights as strings of the harp. They are then held by the hand of God. It was one of the most popular and most photographed work at the fair; small metal souvenir copies were sold, and many postcards of the piece were purchased.
At the time, Savage was the only Black woman to be commissioned at the fair – she was paid $360. Savage did not have funds to have the piece cast in bronze or to move and store it. Like other temporary installations the sculpture was destroyed by bulldozers as part of the fair’s cleanup, and all that remains is a replica of a souvenir that existed at the time. With her own struggle to get an education, Savage devoted her life to teaching other Black artists how to sculpt, draw and paint. After the fair, Savage opened a gallery specializing in art by African Americans, but it did not survive for long. Works exhibited included those by Beauford Delaney, James Lesesne Wells, Lois Mailou Jones, and Richmond Barthé.
Although she was a leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance, low sales and a lack of financial resources dogged Savage’s career. Many of her works were done in plaster, and she was unable to raise the money to have them cast in more permanent materials, so not all have survived. She retired from art in the early 1940's. Around 1945 Savage retired to Saugerties, New York, where she taught children in nearby summer camps, occasionally sold her work, and wrote children's stories and murder mysteries. Augusta Savage played a significant role in the evolution and inclusivity of Black artists. Her hard work, dedication and welcoming programs launched the successful careers of several famous artists and equality in the visual arts community. Savage is remembered today as a great artist, activist and arts educator, serving as an inspiration to the many that she taught, helped and encouraged.
