William H. Johnson (1901–1970) was born in Florence, South Carolina. One of his favorite childhood activities was copying the comic strips from the newspaper. By the time he was a teenager, Johnson wanted to pursue a career in art. But that would have been nearly impossible for an AfricanAmerican living in the segregated South. So at 17, Johnson headed for New York City. He worked at various odd jobs until he had saved enough money to enroll in the National Academy of Design.
When Johnson graduated, one of his teachers arranged for him to study art in Paris—the center of the art world. Johnson lived in France for several years, experimenting with Post-Impressionism and Expressionism. The modern styles developing in Europe at the time inspired Johnson to make more expressive, emotional art. The young artist also met and married a Danish woman while living in Paris. After their marriage, they moved to Scandinavia and lived there for almost ten years. During this period, Johnson studied primitivism and folk art, which inspired him to simplify his own art.
Johnson returned to New York in 1938. He began working at the Harlem Community Art Center as part of the WPA Federal Art Project, a Depressionera program that provided jobs for artists. Harlem was a magnet for African-American artists, writers, and musicians. Johnson began to create paintings based on everyday life in Harlem and on his memories of African-American life in South Carolina.
While living in Europe, Johnson experimented with printmaking, especially influenced by the woodcut and linoleum cut prints made by the German Expressionists. When Johnson returned to the United States, he incorporated printmaking into his work. Blind Musician, completed in 1940, is a screenprint.
Blind Musician is based on street performers that Johnson saw in Harlem. The artist used simple, stylized shapes to portray a blind singer accompanied by a woman playing a guitar. The singer taps a tambourine to keep time. Johnson used areas of bright, flat colors to define each form. Complementary color combinations—the woman’s orange jacket and the man’s blue suit—create a visual energy and a sense of the lively music. After making the print, Johnson added tempera paint to accentuate areas of the image.