Born: October 7, 1887, Boston, MA

Education: West Art School, San Francisco, 1915; California School of Arts, 1919–23; California School of Fine Arts, 1940–42

Died: October 10, 1967, San Francisco, CA

Sculptor, ceramist, and printmaker, Johnson produced African American figures of telling beauty and reserve. One of the most inventive artists of the Harlem Renaissance era, he sculpted human figures and still objects in plaster, bronze, and earthenware. “It is the pure American Negro I am concerned with, aiming to show the natural beauty and dignity in that characteristic lip and that characteristic hair, bearing and manner,” he said, “and I wish to show that beauty not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself” (Wintz and Glasrud, 2012, p. 106).

His busts, like “Negro Woman” (1933), and public creations have lasted. For the Federal Arts Project (1930s) in the San Francisco Bay Area, he built a large redwood organ screen in the chapel of California School for the Blind. He created entrance reliefs and mosaic murals for the walking deck to the Maritime Museum in Aquatic Park and two 8-foot Inca Indians, seated on llamas, depict native heritage. Johnson's cast stone frieze decorates the athletic field of the George Washington Carver High School. In 1947 he started constructing massive panels of porcelain on steel. Over the next two decades he received commissions for them, including a 78-by-39 feet panel for a Reno casino.