James Lesesne Wells

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James Lesesne Wells

American, 1902 - 1993

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Birth LocationAtlanta, Georgia

Active InWashintgon, D.C.

BiographyJames Lesesne Wells was born to Reverend Frederick W. and Hortensia Ruth Lesesne Wells, a teacher, in 1902. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Wells spent most of his childhood in Florida. Wells considered his first artistic exposures to be helping stencil the interior decorations of his father's church and aiding his mother while she taught her students art lessons. Eventually moving to live with relatives in New York city, Wells would go on to attend the National Academy of Design, and then to major in art education at Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1925.

Wells’ time in New York allowed him to access exhibitions of African sculpture that went on to influence numerous artists in the Harlem Renaissance and American art more broadly. In addition, his education at Columbia brought him into contact with instructors like Arthur Young, a printmaker, and Millard Meiss, an art historian. Their focuses on German Expressionism and the printmaker Albrecht Durer, respectively, would be lifelong influences on Wells’ practice.

New York in the 1920s and 1930s was a focal point for social movements as well as artistic experimentation. Wells’ decision in 1933 to focus chiefly on the medium of printmaking stemmed from his commitment to social issues discussed in the work of Black authors and commentators at the time. He believed the medium allowed art, and the issues an artist aimed to explore, to be more accessible to the public. His social commitments were further expressed in his engagement with arts education in Harlem during the Great Depression. Wells’ work in arts education would culminate in the years he spent teaching at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Wells’ move from New York to Washington D.C. saw him living across from the author Alain Locke, who was a frequent supporter of his work and whom he had previously met before his move. J.B. Neumann, who had helped to facilitate Wells’ hiring at Howard University, likewise remained a constant contact and exhibited the artist’s work alongside established German Expressionist printmakers. During his decades spent in Washington D.C., Wells took part in protesting against discriminatory practices commonplace in the city at the time alongside his brother-in-law and president of the local NAACP chapter, Eugene Davidson. Throughout this time, Wells continued to teach and create prints of increasing complexity involving African American and Biblical subjects.

In 1968, Wells retired from teaching at Howard University. The artist would continue to create prints and paintings into his eighties. Solo exhibitions of his work were held by Fiske University, the Washington Project for the Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Newark Museum in the decades following his retirement. He would receive a Living Legend Award at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta in 1991.

Wells died in Washington D.C. in January of 1993.

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