Edward L. Loper, Sr.

Edward Leroy Loper Sr. (April 7, 1916 – October 11, 2011) was an African American artist and teacher from Delaware, best known for his vibrant palette and juxtaposition of colors. He taught painting for almost 70 years.

Early life and education Loper was born to a poor family on the east side of Wilmington, Delaware, in a racially mixed section known as Frogtown. At the time of his birth, his mother was 16. Loper was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother. He attended Howard High School, where he was an All-State football and basketball player. At the time, this was the only high school in Delaware that African Americans were allowed to attend.

Career

Artist beginnings In 1936, during the Great Depression, Loper started working in Delaware for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), rendering drawings of decorative art for the Index of American Design, a large archive of folk art images based in Washington, DC. The job required him to illustrate images of objects in American design such as toys and furniture. He produced 113 of them in total. He later credited the job with giving him his start as an artist. Three of his renderings (a Windsor chair, a toy bank and a cast-iron fire screen) were later included in the Index of Modern Design's 2002 exhibition, Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design. The index is currently housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Loper was encouraged to paint by his WPA co-worker Walter Pyle, the nephew of illustrator and author Howard Pyle. Loper began studying Howard Pyle's work at the Wilmington Public Library.

Painting In 1937, Loper became the first African American to have a painting accepted by the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts (now the Delaware Art Museum). He was profiled in Howard University professor Alain Locke's landmark 1940 book The Negro in Art. In 1941, he exhibited a painting at the University of Delaware. At the time, African Americans were not allowed to attend the university.

Loper's artistic direction was solidified in 1963, after he was invited to attend classes at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, established by Albert C. Barnes in 1922 and home to one of the world's largest private art collections. Starting in the late 1940s, to escape some of the racism he experienced at home, he began traveling to Quebec City in Canada, where he would paint boldly-colored cityscapes. He began taking his students there every summer starting in the 1960s. Over the years he would teach at the Allied Kid Company, Delaware Art Museum, Delaware College of Art and Design, Lincoln University, Jewish Community Center in Wilmington, and finally, classes at his studio. As a teacher, Loper was known for his charismatic, intense and demanding demeanor. On November 1, 2011, Delaware senators Thomas R. Carper and Christopher A. Coons memorialized Loper as part of the Congressional Record. A Loper painting hangs in the Delaware governor's mansion, and two of Loper's paintings hung in Vice President Joe Biden's official residence at Number One Observatory Circle in Washington, DC.

An oral history interview with Loper conducted on March 26, 1964 is housed at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. Also in the archives are his papers from 1965 to 1988, and an oral history interview from May 12, 1989. Edward Loper: Prophet of Color, a 35-minute documentary created for Teleduction, won a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary Program in 2000. In 2013, the Hagley Museum and Library produced a 22-minute documentary, Edward Loper: African American Painter, based on a 1998 interview with the artist.

Exhibitions (selected) Whyte Gallery, Washington, DC, 1938 Solo exhibition, Howard High School, Wilmington, DE, 1939 Art of the American Negro (1851-1940), American Negro Exposition, Chicago, IL, 1940 Solo exhibition, University of Delaware, 1941 Solo exhibitions, Carlen Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1941, 1947 The Negro Artist Comes of Age, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY, 1945 Two-man exhibition with Andrew Wyeth, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 1949 Solo exhibition, Warehouse Gallery, Arden, DE, 1957 Paintings and Sculpture by Frank DelleDonne, Edward Loper, and Charles Parks, Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1960 Solo exhibition, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, 1965 Solo exhibition, Little Studio, New York, NY, 1967 Solo exhibition, West Chester University, West Chester, PA, 1969 Edward Loper Sr./Edward Loper Jr. exhibition, Delaware Art Museum, 1971 Solo exhibition, La Galerie Zanettin, Quebec City, Quebec, 1980 Solo exhibition, Hardcastle Gallery, Wilmington, DE, 1990 A Tribute to the Teacher, Christina Cultural Center, Wilmington, DE, 1995 Edward L. Loper: From the Prism's Edge, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE, 1996 Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design, Index of Modern Design, Washington, DC, 2002 African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VII, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY, 2000 The Art of Edward Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters, University Museums at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2007 The Edward L. Loper, Sr. Collection: A Centennial Exhibition, University Museums at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2016 The Loper Tradition: Paintings by Edward Loper, Sr. and Edward Loper, Jr., Delaware Art Museum, 2019.

Honors and awards Honorable mention, Annual Delaware Show, Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1937 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Delaware State University, 1998 Art Educators of Delaware Honoree, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, 2001 Honorary Degree of Humanities, University of Delaware, 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award, NAACP, 2004 Ambassador of Goodwill Award, City of Wilmington, DE, 2004