Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) was an African American artist, painter, and mixed-media artist, famous for her “story quilts”—narrative quilts blending painting, fabric, and text. Committed to the civil rights and feminist movements, she was also an author of children's books.
Faith Ringgold(1930 — 2024)
Faith Ringgold
États-Unis
6 min read
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1930 in Harlem, New York, within the African American community
- Began creating her “story quilts”—painted, narrative quilts—starting in the 1980s
- Published the award-winning children's book “Tar Beach” in 1991, based on one of her quilts
- An activist deeply involved in the feminist and anti-racist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s
- Died in 2024, recognized as a major figure in African American art
Works & Achievements
A vast canvas depicting a race riot, now a major work on the tensions of 1960s America. Today housed at the MoMA.
A painting in which the American flag bleeds, denouncing racial violence beneath the national symbol.
Her most famous story quilt, telling of a little girl who flies above Harlem. Housed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
A children's book adaptation of her quilt, awarded the Caldecott Honor and several children's literature prizes.
A series of story quilts featuring a fictional young Black artist among the great masters of art in Paris.
An autobiography in which Ringgold traces her life as an artist, a woman, and an activist.
Soft fabric sculptures inspired by African art, made together with her mother, asserting a pride in her roots.
Anecdotes
As an asthmatic child, Faith Ringgold spent long days at home in Harlem, where her mother, a fashion designer, taught her to sew and work with fabric. Those hours spent with needle and cloth would later feed into her famous *story quilts*.
In 1963, the university denied Ringgold a degree in painting because she was a woman: she first had to earn a teaching degree. Yet she would go on to become one of the most celebrated African American artists of the 20th century.
In the 1970s, Ringgold organized protests outside New York's Whitney Museum and MoMA to denounce the absence of Black artists and women from major exhibitions. She was even briefly arrested for having “desecrated” the American flag in a work condemning racism.
Her quilt *Tar Beach* (1988) tells the story of a little girl who imagines flying over Harlem from the rooftop of her building. In 1991 the work became a children's picture book that earned a prestigious distinction, the Caldecott Honor.
To get around the galleries that ignored Black women artists, Ringgold would sometimes carry her fabric works — light and foldable — in a simple suitcase, which let her show them anywhere without the heavy frames of traditional painting.
Primary Sources
I wanted to tell my story, or rather a part of it, and the story of my ancestors, through art.
I can fly, yes, fly. Me, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, I have flown over the highway, the buildings, the George Washington Bridge, into the starry sky.
Art can change the world. That is why I paint: to tell the truth about what it means to be a Black woman in America.
Key Places
African-American neighborhood where Ringgold was born and raised, home of the Harlem Renaissance. It inspires most of her works, including Tar Beach.
University where Ringgold studied art and earned her degrees, despite the obstacles placed before women. There she shaped her calling as a painter.
Museum outside which Ringgold protested in the 1970s to demand the inclusion of Black artists and women. An emblematic site of her activism.
University where Ringgold taught art from 1987 until her retirement. There she passed on her commitment to generations of students.
Town where Ringgold settled and worked in her studio during her final decades, and where she died in 2024.
