Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

American painter Alma Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891. Known for her brilliant and colorful abstract paintings, she did not begin her career as a professional artist until she was nearly 70. Born to a middle-class family in Georgia, Alma was the eldest of four girls. Her father was a businessman and her mother was a designer and dressmaker. They valued education and moved their family to Washington, D.C., in 1906 to pursue better schools for their children and less segregation. Alma was creative and showed artistic inclination in grade school but could only fully foster these talents once she reached Armstrong Technical High School and took her first art class.

After graduating from Armstrong, she earned her teaching credentials and taught kindergarten for a brief six-year period at the Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1921, she sought to further her education and entered Howard University as a junior home economics major, intending to pursue costume design. Eventually, Alma changed her major to fine art at the suggestion of Professor James V. Herring, the recent founder of that department. Her focus was on sculpture, and her paintings could be described as uninteresting and academic. She graduated in 1924 with a Bachelor of Science and was the first person to do so from the fine arts department at Howard. The following year, she was hired as an art teacher at Shaw Junior High School in D.C., where she would remain teaching for the next thirty five years.

Over her nearly four-decade teaching career, Alma never gave up on her artistic aspirations. She continued to nourish her talent while becoming an active local community member. From 1930 until 1934, she attended summer classes at the Teaching College of Columbia University and received a master's in art education. In 1936, she founded the School Arts League Project, which aimed to bring more local artistic opportunities to children. In 1943, with the help of her old professor, James Herring, and art historian Alazo Aden, she founded the Barnett-Aden Gallery. This was the first successful black-owned private art gallery in the country. She served as vice president for a time before the gallery was later dissolved in 1969. Sometime during the mid to late 1940s, Alma Joined the D.C. artist community known as the Little Paris Group. Founded by Howard University faculty members and artists Lois Mailou Jones and Celine Marie Tabary, the Little Paris Group was active for about 5 years. The group aimed to offer enrichment opportunities to developing African American artists in the D.C. area through live model drawing classes and salon-style discussions about the latest developments in Modern Art. In 1950, at 59, Alma enrolled at American University. She studied art history and painting for the next decade through night and weekend classes. Her style continually evolved during these ten years, moving from her early traditional style into cubism and abstract expressionism before settling on her now signature bright color field works.

Alma retired from Shaw Junior High School in 1960 at 69. She began painting full-time, making large-scale color field paintings that demonstrated an interest in color theory and were influenced by the New York School and contemporary Abstract Expressionists. Her first retrospective exhibition was in 1966 at the Gallery of Art at Howard University. In the lead-up to the show, she fine-tuned her use of rectangular shapes and rich colors. Alma's layering of colors in concentric, almost meditative patterns was well received, and the show gained her local recognition and critical support.

In 1972, at 81, Alma was awarded a small solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, becoming the first African American woman to do so. Later that same year, she had a much larger exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in D.C. Alma's fame increased immensely after these two shows due partly to the very vocal support of Robert Doty, the then curator at the Whitney. New York critics were impressed with her modern style and the fact that she was in her 80s at the time of her national debut. The New York Times reviewed the Whitney show four times, praising her skill in handling color and her ability to generate a sense of energy and movement through her two-dimensional work. This acknowledgment led to some critical purchases of her work. New York-based curator and editor Thomas B. Hess bought Alma's 1972 painting Red Roses Sonata, which his foundation would later donate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art upon his death. Joshua Taylor, director of the National College of Fine Arts (now known as the Smithsonian American Art Museum), purchased several of Alma's paintings for his private collection.

Alma Thomas passed away in February 1978 at the Howard University Hospital after aortal surgery. In the last 18 years of her life, Alma's art was nationally recognized, and she became a touchstone for both the feminist and African American artists who would follow her. A central figure in American Modernism, several of Alma's pieces were chosen by the Obamas to display in the white house during both terms. In 2014, her painting Resurrection (1966) was acquired by the official White House Collection, making it the first artwork by an African American Woman to enter the permanent collection.