The Art and Influences of Biggers and Criner By P.A. Geddie County Line Magazine is proud to sponsor a new exhibit titled Student/Teacher: Works by Charles Criner & Dr. John Biggers May 15 through August 14 at Tyler Museum of Art. The show spotlights each individual’s artistic style while examining Biggers’ influence on Criner. Drawn from a variety of public and private collections, the selected works on paper are from throughout their respective careers, offering snippets of each artist’s overall body of work.
DR. JOHN BIGGERS & THE MURAL
Dr. John Thomas Biggers, PhD (19242001) established and chaired for 34 years the Department of Art at Texas Southern University (TSU) in Houston before retiring in 1983. In 1988, he was recognized as the Texas Artist of the Year. While working full-time as a teacher and administrator at TSU, Biggers began establishing his reputation as a major African-American artist of the Southwest.
The four sections of the mural tell the story of the history of the progress of African American education in Northeast Texas. Biggers said he felt a responsibility to reflect their spirit and style and he wanted his viewers to identify themselves, and reflect on their own background and cultural heritage.
From 1950 to 1956 he painted four murals in Texas communities, one of which was a 1954 commission by the Naples school board in Morris County in the Upper East Side of Texas to honor Professor Phineas Y. Gray as he was retiring after 30 years in the district. As Dr. Biggers got to know Professor Gray, he decided to paint a mural related to Gray’s Master’s thesis on the history of African American education in Morris County schools. Biggers completed the 22-feet-long by six-feet-tall muslin painting in 1955 titled “History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas.”
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The first segment depicts the bleak period following the Civil War. Education for the young is only a hope for the future as children work in the fields or sit aimlessly on a rail fence. The second segment shows a barren one room school with a matriarchal teacher holding a report card in her hand while some children read as others sit quietly on a bench by the wall. The works of Dr. John Biggers (above) influence countless numbers of people with his large-scale paintings like “The Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education” (opposite page) and a mural (below) that continues to inspire young and old in northeast Texas for almost 70 years. The effects of his art and his teachings endlessly echo the call for racial, gender, and economic justice.
