Born: 10 April 1920, United States
Died: 11 February 2018
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Marie Edwards
The following is republished from the National Endowment for the Arts. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Marie Johnson Calloway (1920-2018) was a mixed-media artist from Baltimore. She attended Morgan State University, earning her degree in arts education in 1952. Notably, Calloway marched in Selma, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965. That experience was formative for her art, and she depicted scenes from the Civil Rights movement as well as other everyday moments from the lives of Black Americans in her work. She is known for her sculpted paintings — three-dimensional works that incorporated paint, wood, cloth, and other materials — like the one above from the JELMA collection.