Eldzier Cortor

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Eldzier Cortor is an African-American artist and printmaker born on January 10, 1916, in Tidewater, Virginia, to John and Ophelia Cortor. His family moved to Chicago when Cortor was about a year old, eventually settling in that city's South Side, where Cortor attended Englewood High School. Forced to drop out of high school to work, he took evening drawing classes at Chicago's famed Art Institute. In 1940, he worked with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), where he drew scenes of Depression-era Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. In 1949, Cortor studied in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and taught at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince from 1949-1951.

Throughout his career, Cortor has chosen African-American women as his dominant theme, explaining, "The Black woman represents the Black race. She is the Black Spirit; she conveys a feeling of eternity and a continuance of life."