“I was born at the end of the 19th century, horse-and-buggy days, and experienced the phenomenal changes of the 20th century machine and space age. Today not only can our great scientists send astronauts to and from the moon to photograph its surface and bring back samples of rocks and other materials, but through the medium of color television all can actually see and experience the thrill of these adventures. These phenomena set my creativity in motion.”
E ndlessly inspired by the natural world around her, Alma Thomas’s kaleidoscopic abstractions encapsulate her perceptive response to moments in t.mes – as seen in her exuberant 1969 painting Snoopy Gets a Glance at Mars. Having grown up in an era characterized by social strife and political unrest, Thomas gained acclaim for abstraction when fellow African American artists were responding to political unrest and change via figuration. Through her singular style of abstraction, she strove to capture beauty and the profound accomplishments of humanity. Thomas was particularly fascinated by the Apollo 11 moon landing, notably demonstrated by the present work. Executed in 1969, the first year of NASA’s Apollo program, Snoopy Gets a Glance at Mars is one of several paintings inspired by the first lunar missions. Other titles such as Snoopy Sees the Earth Wrapped in Sunset and Starry Night with Astronauts belong to the permanent collects ions of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, respectively. Thomas used the term “Snoopy” for some titles in this group of paintings, including the present work, because it was the term used by astronauts referring to space vehicles used on the moon. Thomas continued to create her Space paintings in her signature expressive, abstract style throughout the NASA Apollo program, which lasted until 1972. Each painting provides its own unique window into the universe, inspired by the groundbreaking reality of the missions but seen veritably through Thomas’s eyes.
Born in 1891 in Columbus, Georgia, at the age of fifteen Thomas moved with her family to Washington, D.C., where she spent the majority of her adult life. While there, Thomas studied painting at Howard University, where she was the first to graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Replica Handbags ; she later went on to earn a Master of Arts degree in education from Columbia University in New York. Thomas dedicated herself to a career as an arts educator in Washington, D.C.’s public school system while pursuing her own painting practice part-t.mes . She first debuted her own work at 75 years old, and her career as an artist was clearly punctuated by overarching themes. Her first major group of paintings is referred to as her Earth series, which were concentric circles bearing resemblance to fellow Color Field painter, Kenneth Noland. She soon, however, became deeply inspired by space—the innovation and mystery that it is entrenched in. As Thomas said in 1971, however, “My space paintings are expressed in the same color patterns as my earth paintings with the canvas forming intriguing motifs around and through color composition.” In both series of works, Thomas zooms out and speculates what the flowers and earth look like from a cosmic distance.
RIGHT: Kenneth Noland, Heat, 1958. Sold for $3.37 million in Replica Shoes ’s Contemporary Art Day Auction, November 2015.
“I began to think about what I would see if I were in an airplane. You look down on things. You streak through the clouds so fast you don’t know whether the flower below is a violet or what. You see only streaks of color.”
At the heart of Thomas’s Space paintings is a desire to take a step away from reality; to imagine how the earth looked from an otherworldly distance. On the occasion of her exhibition, Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980, art historian Kellie Jones wrote: “Thomas was captivated by it all: craft and men, orbiting and landing on the moon, the material of the lunar surface, pictures of other planets...and Earth as seen from the cosmos. Thomas’s daubs of color also captured the grainy texture of the televised image and the screens that.mes
diated much of her space imagery. Yes she imagined seeing her visions of earthbound flora from ‘way up there on the moon’ or ‘planes that are airborne,’ as well, even before having flown commercially, which signaled her progressive, forward-looking vision or Afro-Futuristic thinking” (Exh. Cat., New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, “To the Max: Energy and Experimentation,” Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980, April - July 2006, p. 24). Thomas was certainly captivated by the world and its achievements—while astronauts were traveling through space and landing on the moon, the civil rights movement was reaching its end, rendering her Space paintings a poignant.mes
taphor for progress.
Space Paintings in Esteemed Museum collects ions
