John Biggers’ world of women and washboards, men and metamorphosis, and Southern Blacks and shotgun houses was forged most directly from influences in Gastonia, North Carolina, Houston’s Third Ward and the shores of West Africa.
“Dance of Creation,” a retrospective of Biggers’ work, is on view at the Hampton University Museum, the nation’s oldest African American museum.
Nationally recognized as an artist and educator, Biggers spent his adult life portraying Black people as indelibly imprinted by rootedness and displacement. He attended Hampton in the 1940s, where he met his mentor, Viktor Lowenfeld. In 1990, he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university. Two of Biggers’ 10-foot-by-20-foot murals from the early 1990s, “House of the Turtle” and “Tree House” – collaborations with his nephew James – are significant pieces in the museum’s collection…