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ARTS & Entertainment 33 .... N.Y. AMSTERDAM NEWS / Sat. September 13, 1980 Hale Woodruff, distinguished artist, dead at 80 [[image: photo of 3 people]] Holding hands were the loving couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hale Woodruff, and their son Roy. (Dave Greene Photo) By John Hewitt Hale A. Woodruff, distinguished Black American painter, muralist and art educator, died early Saturday morning, September 6, in New York Hospital, at 80. Active professionally almost until his terminal hospitalization, Woodruff will be remembered for a long list of accomplishments and awards, and for his use of African themes in his works. Born in Cairo, Illinois, on August 26, 1900, and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Woodruff decided early on a career in art. At age 18, he enrolled at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis. Later, the pursuit of further art studies would take him to Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum, the Academie Scandinave and the Academie Moderne in Paris, and, in 1936, to Mexico to work in fresco with Diego Rivera. In 1931, Woodruff became instructor of art at Atlanta University. While there, he developed a large number of young Black artists and promoted the careers of many others through the University's annual exhibitions of paintings and sculpture, which he initiated in 1941. From 1945 until his retirement in 1968, he served as professor of art education at New York University. Between his first Harmon Foundation prize in 1926 and his most recent accolade, the Afro-American art exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C., in March/April of this year, there were many exhibits, honors and honorary degrees. Last year's retrospective showing at the Studio Museum in Harlem, "Hale Woodruff: 50 Years Of His Art," attracted a greater attendance than any other exhibit before or since. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has an oil painting of his (Figure, 1958) and two charcoal drawings (Torso #1 and Torso #2, both undated). The Newark Museum long ago acquired his Poor Man's Cotton (1944). The Indianapolis Museum of Art has his Yellow Landscape With Constellation (undated). The Black community of Detroit raised the funds, purchased his Ancestral Memory (1966) and in 1978 presented it to the Detroit Institute of the Arts. He felt quite strongly, however, that his most significant work was The Art of the Negro, the multipanel mural he did for Trevor Arnett Library at Atlanta University. Woodruff's interest in African art stemmed from a book he purchased in Indianapolis in 1923. Greatly impressed by what he saw, he purposely and consciously began to incorporate the esthetics of African sculpture and cave paintings into his own charcoal drawings and oils, which, over the years, tended to become increasingly abstract. He never attempted to render African forms directly, but used them as the basis for distilling and creating new forms, emphasizing the frontality, the unity, the gesture, the sense of dignity and presence that exist in African art, and he did this apart from any historical, religious, or functional rose that art plays in African cultures. His aim was to interpret the African artist's own view of life and the nature of man. Woodruff is survived by his wife, Mrs. Theodora Woodruff, and a son, Roy, who is also an artist. [[image: photo of a man signing a poster]] Professor Woodruff autographs one of his posters at the Studio Museum reception for his one-man show last year. (Coreen Simpson Photo) [[image: photo of 3 people]] Artist Ernest Crichlow (1) and Jill Beasley, Exxon public relations staffer, enjoyed Hale Woodruff's company at the Community Church Art Gallery's "Hale and Roy Woodruff Exhibit" featuring his drawings and his son's paintings. (Dave Greene) [[image: photo of 4 people]] Among the friends of the Hale Woodruffs at the exhibit were [[?]] Dr. June Chisholm, Leslie Tolbert and Dorothy Mann who chatted with the retired NYU art professors... [[print fades]]
