“Wild Horse” Thelma Johnson Streat Original Painting

Original gouache painting on watercolor paper

Early 1940s

Streat (1911-59): a native of the US Pacific North West, moved to San Francisco in 1941. It was there and through work with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that she forged relationships with other notable artists including Diego Rivera for whom she was a favorite assistant. Rivera in fact wrote: “The work of Thelma Johnson Streat is in my opinion one of the most interesting manifestations in this country at the present. It is extremely evolved and sophisticated enough to reconquer the grace and purity of African and American art.”

At the time of her move to San Francisco, Streat seemed to be exploring graphic themes in African tribalism in her work as alluded to in Rivera’s letter and exemplified by her painting “Rabbit Man” (gouache on board measuring 6 5/8 x 4 7/8 in). That work was exhibited at San Francisco’s DeYoung Memorial Museum and purchased by New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1942. The purchase and subsequent exhibition of that work by MoMA garnered Streat the distinction of being the first African-American woman to be shown by that institution.

It’s worth noting that MoMA had just a few years earlier (1935) staged what was considered at the time to be *the* landmark exhibition of African tribal art in the US and was perhaps interested in documenting its effect on American art scene when they purchased “Rabbit Man.” Up to that point the fascination with tribal arts had largely remained a European one with clear influences on artists living there like Picasso, Léger, Modigliani, Klee, and Giacometti. For anyone familiar with tribal African works, West African (specifically Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso) form, color and motif are obvious in “Rabbit Man” as is the form of a chiwara from the Bambara people of Mali in “Wild Horse.”

In 2016 Streat’s painting/mural study “Medicine and Transportation” was acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and is on display as part of the permanent collection.