Augusta Savage

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Comment by Eva Libre on June 7, 2023 at 3:57pm

The sculpture that brought her the most fame was one of an expressive Harlem child, titled Gamin (1929). The work was also instrumental in awarding her a scholarship to study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. A few years earlier in 1922, she had received the French scholarship but the offer was rescinded when white Alabama students who had received similar grants refused to travel to France unless she was removed from the group.

Her unsuccessful appeal against that loss initiated her lifelong fight for civil rights and the recognition of black artists..in the. late 1930s, Savage was commissioned to create a sculpture for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The piece, The Harp, inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” became one of her best-known.

In 1940 she retired from art and moved to a farm in New York where she lived in rural obscurity. She passed away on March 26, 1962. While she was all but forgotten at the time of her death, Savage is remembered today as a great artist, activist, and arts educator.

I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work.

~ Augusta Savage – A Monument of Hope and Beauty. The title Gamin refers to a French word meaning “street urchin“, leading some scholars to believe the portrait bust represents a homeless boy, while others believe it may be a likeness of Savage's nephew, Ellis Ford