_________________FAITH
_____________________RINGGOLD
Internationally Celebrated Artist
Mixed Media Sculptor, Writer, Lecturer, and Activist.
Born: October 8, 1930, Harlem, New York, NY
Died: April 13, 2024 (age 93 years)
by Kailee Elizabeth Cross
Edited and Revised by Dale Ricardo Shields – { 2026 }
Faith Ringgold was born on October 8, 1930, in Harlem, New York City. She is an African-American artist who was less concerned with museum exposure growing up and more determined to express her protest of social order through her artwork.
An internationally celebrated American artist, author, and activist, renowned for her innovative story quilts that combine painting, quilted fabric, and narrative text to explore themes of race, gender, and African American history. She was also a prominent painter, sculptor, performance artist, and educator.
Artistic Style and Themes
Ringgold’s work is known for its powerful visual storytelling and its exploration of the African American experience within the context of American history and social justice.
- Political Engagement: Her early work from the 1960s, such as the American People Series and the Black Light Series, directly addressed the Civil Rights movement and racial tensions in the United States. These paintings often featured stark, figurative depictions and incorporated text to make explicit political statements.
- Story Quilts: Ringgold is perhaps best known for her narrative quilts, a medium she adopted in the 1980s, inspired by Tibetan thangkas and African American quilting traditions passed down through her family. These works, created in collaboration with her mother, fashion designer Willi Posey, allowed her to literally embed her personal and political stories into the fabric of her art, providing a unique platform for her voice when the mainstream art world was less receptive.
- Multimedia Approach: Ringgold’s diverse practice also included mixed-media soft sculptures and masks, performance art, and large-scale public commissions, such as a mosaic for the New York subway system at 125th Street in Harlem.
Notable Works and Legacy
- Ringgold’s art has been exhibited globally and is held in the permanent collections of major institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art.
- The American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding (1967): A powerful oil painting that challenges the social dynamics of race and power in America by incorporating the American flag motif.
Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima? (1983): Her first story quilt, which reimagined the derogatory Aunt Jemima stereotype as a successful businesswoman and family matriarch.
- Tar Beach (1988): This famous story quilt depicts a young girl in Harlem dreaming of flying over the city. Ringgold adapted it into an acclaimed children’s book in 1991, which won the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award.
Activism: A tireless activist, Ringgold co-founded the Women Students and Artists for Black Liberation and led demonstrations demanding that major museums, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, include the work of Black artists and women artists in their exhibitions.
Faith Ringgold
Nikkolas Smith (Artist)
Two main themes she expresses in her artwork are racism and gender inequality (Patton 197).
“All Power to the People“
Faith Ringgold (Artist)
“All Power to the People” by Faith Ringgold captures the spirit of self-determination and autonomy expressed by community leaders of the 1970s. In a simplistic rendering, composed of pared-down figures, Ringgold presents a representation of a black family in the same colorway as the Pan-African flag.
Paying homage and solidarity to the Black Panthers, this serigraph print is also in step with the modes of mass communication that were accessible to political organizations in the 1970s, and the contributions to the movement made by African American printmakers.”
Getting To Know FAITH RINGGOLD
She strived for the art of African Americans and women to have more museum exposure. Through her various ways of going against what was socially accepted in her artwork, her art became a voice of protest for the advancement of African Americans and women.
Faith Ringgold, born in 1930 in Harlem, New York, is a painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, writer, teacher, and lecturer.
She received her B.S. and M.A. degrees in visual art from the City College of New York in 1955 and 1959. Professor Emerita of Art at the University of California in San Diego, Ringgold has received 23 Honorary Doctorates.
During the early 1960’s Ringgold traveled in Europe. She created her first political paintings, The American People Series, from 1963 to 1967, and had her first and second one-person exhibitions at the Spectrum Gallery in New York. In the early 1970s, Ringgold began making tankas (inspired by a Tibetan art form of paintings framed in richly brocaded fabrics), soft sculptures, and masks. She later utilized this medium in her masked performances of the 1970’s and 80’s.
Although Faith Ringgold’s art was initially inspired by African art in the 1960s, it was not until the late 1970s that she traveled to Nigeria and Ghana to see the rich tradition of masks that has continued to be her greatest influence.
She made her first quilt, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980, in collaboration with her mother, Madame Willi Posey. The quilts were an extension of her tankas from the 1970’s. However, these paintings were not only bordered with fabric but quilted, creating for her a unique way of painting using the quilt medium.
Ringgold’s first story quilt Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima? was written in 1983 as a way of publishing her unedited words. The addition of text to her quilts has developed into a unique medium and style all her own.
Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima?
Faith Ringgold
The year 1983
Crown Publishers published Faith Ringgold’s first book, the award-winning Tar Beach in 1991. It has won over 20 awards including the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award for the best-illustrated children’s book of 1991. An animated version with Natalie Cole as the voice-over was created by HBO in 2010. The book is based on the story quilt of the same title from The Woman on a Bridge Series, 1988. The original painted story quilt, Tar Beach, is in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Her second children’s book Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky was published in 1992 by Crown. In 1993 Hyperion Books published Dinner at Aunt Connie’s, Ringgold’s third book based on The Dinner Quilt, 1986. Faith Ringgold’s autobiography and first book for an adult audience We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold (Bullfinch 1995; released in paperback by Duke University Press in 2005) as well as the children’s book My Dream of Martin Luther King were published. To date, she has illustrated 17 children’s books. Faith’s most recent books are Harlem Renaissance Party (Harper Collins 2015) and We Came to America (Alfred A Knopf 2016).
Faith Ringgold has been represented worldwide exclusively by ACA Galleries since 1995.
Faith Ringgold: American Story
