Artists

Fred Jones

"In the 1940s Fred Jones was an active member of the Southside Community Arts Center in Chicago working side by side with Eldzier Cortor and other outstanding artists from Chicago. Jones was an uncommonly popular artist in his day, and exhibited throughout the South, winning prestigious awards at various collegiate exhibitions.

Jones was both a serious artist and scholar. He was deeply influenced by the work of the New Negro movement, and sought to incorporate an "African" aesthetic into his work. Like his mentor, Cortor, who studied in Haiti in an effort to reconnect with his lost African roots, Jones worked to bring elements of modernism with what he saw as traditional and African elements. Color and form were his main tools for this effort."

Notes written by William Parker Hathcock, III - Art Curator and Consultant