STEVANUS MARIA LETSOIN yang dikenal dengan STEVEN LETSOIN dan pimpinan BLACK SWEET, lahir di ‘kampung TERI’, Pulau ‘Kimaam’ (Merauke) tahun 1954 dimana orang tuanya bertugas sebagai guru disana. Di awal tahun 70an, merantau ke Fak-Fak sampai menyelesaikan pendidikan SPG disana. Di Fak-Fak pula beliau mulai bermain musik sebagai pemain Bass. Sebenarnya beliau sudah mendapatkan tempat tugas sebagai guru di Agimuga tetapi tahun 1977 berangkat ke Merauke dan tertahan disana. Di Merauke mulai bermain di Band The Mars sebagai gitaris dan juga vocalis. Album perdana BB yang baru saja keluar saat itu, beliau yang menyanyikannya di band. Hanya setahun di Merauke, berangkat ke Jayapura dan kuliah di UNCEN lalu bergabung di band UNCEN bersama Eddy Pattipeiluhu, Robby Manengkey dan Yan Ulukyanan, juga di Band BPD Irian Jaya. Setelah Harry Letsoin & John Keff datang dan bergabung, mereka bermain di Band KODAM XVII Cenderawasih sampai berangkat di Jakarta dan dikenal denga
New York was waiting for Aaron Douglas, though no one knew just how much, including the artist himself. By the time he arrived in 1925 he had no idea what was waiting, not the lifetime of work, and certainly not the eventual reputation as the Harlem Renaissance’s father of African-American art.
Douglas, with the urging of German-born Art Deco artist Winold Reiss and writers Alain Locke and W. E. B. DuBois, was encouraged to study African art. Studying cubism and Egyptian art, he blended them with Art Deco and modern design to help create a uniquely African-American aesthetic. His flat silhouettes and muted colors appealed: soon his work was everywhere.
Douglas’s paintings were reproduced in books, such as Locke’s ground-breaking The New Negro, 1925; James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones, 1927; and Langston Hughes’s Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927. The magazines Opportunity and Crisis both commissioned him as a graphic artist, and Crisis editor DuBois hired him.
Image: Betsy Graves Reyneau, Aaron Douglas, oil on canvas, 1953.
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.
Comments
Post a Comment