Loïs Mailou Jones

African-American artist who bridged Harlem Renaissance and Haitian cultural movements

Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998) created a visual lexicon merging African diasporic traditions with modernist techniques. Her 1938 painting Les Fétiches became the first Cubist work by a Black artist acquired by the Smithsonian.

Jones pioneered textile design for African markets while teaching at Howard University. She secretly entered competitions using male pseudonyms to bypass racial barriers, winning the 1944 Robert Woods Bliss Prize for landscape painting.

Her 1953-1991 Haitian period produced 42 vodou-inspired masterpieces. At 79, Jones became the first African-American to exhibit solo at Paris' Musée du Panthéon. The New York Times called her 1989 MoMA retrospective 'a chromatic bridge between continents.'