Born in Florence, South Carolina, William H. Johnson (19011970) moved to New York in his teens and worked at a variety of jobs to pay for an art education at New York's prestigious National Academy of Design. With Johnson living in Denmark by the late '30s, the threat of war and his desire to “paint his own people” prompted him to return to New York, where he created powerful scenes of African American life in New York and the rural South in a colorful, consciously folk-art style.
