Ringgold, Faith

Ringgold, Faith

(born Oct. 8, 1930, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. artist, author, and political activist. She began teaching art in New York's public schools in the 1950s. In 1963 she began her “American People” series of paintings, which dealt with the civil-rights movement from a female perspective. In the 1970s she became active in promoting feminist art and the racial integration of the New York art world. Her famous “story quilts,” inspired by Tibetan tankas, depict stories set in the context of African American history. She adapted one of her quilts, Tar Beach, as a children's book and went on to publish other books for children.

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Ringgold, Faith (1930–  ) painter, soft sculptor, performance artist, social activist; born in New York City. She earned B.A. (1948) and M.A. (1959) degrees at City College of New York and began to paint seriously after a trip to Europe in 1961. She soon put aside European influences, however, and began to represent her African-American heritage. A strong feminist, she stated that her art had "taken its direction" from her awareness of herself as a woman artist. From the 1970s, she increasingly concerned herself with representations of black women, often creating cloth and bead female figures with traditional African craft techniques. She also did wall hangings and quilts, appeared on stage in her own performance pieces, and wrote and illustrated two books. Her work hangs in many private collections and American museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art.