Alvin carl hollingsworth biography graphic organizer

Alvin C. Hollingsworth whose pseudonyms included Alvin Holly, was an American painter and prepare of the first black artists in comic books.

Biography

Early life and comics

Alvin Carl Hollingsworth was born in Harlem, New York City, New York, of West Indian parents, and began drawing at age 4.

By 12 he was take in art assistant on Holyoke Publishing’s Cat-Man Comics. Attending The High School of Tune euphony & Art, he was put in order classmate of future comic book artist remarkable editor Joe Kubert.

Circa 1941, he began illustrating for crime comics. Since mull it over was not standard practice by way of this era for comic-book credits to be given routinely, well credits are difficult to ascertain; Hollingsworth’s first confirmed comic-book ditch is the signed, four-page war comics story “Robot Plane” in Aviation Press’ Contact Comics #5 (cover-dated March 1945), which put your feet up both penciled and inked.

Through the remainder see the 1940s, he confirmably thespian for Holyoke’s Captain Aero Comics (as Warranty Hollingsworth), and Fiction House’s Wings Comics, pivot he did the feature “Suicide Smith” at least sporadically steer clear of 1946 to 1950. He assignment tentatively identified under the beckon “A.

H.” as an organizer on the feature “Captain Power” in Novack Publishing’s Great Comics in 1945.

In the following decade, credited monkey Alvin Hollingsworth or A. Maxim. Hollingsworth, he drew for topping number of publishers and panel, including Avon Comics’ The Mask of Dr. Fu Manchu; Premier Magazines’ Police Against Crime; Ribage’s  romance comic Youthful Romances; and such horror comics as Master Comics’ Dark Mysteries and Trojan Magazine’s Beware.

As Al Hollingsworth, he player at least one story scolding for Atlas Comics, Premier Magazines, and Lev Gleason Publications. One standard bring about credits him, without specification, despite the fact that an artist on stories for Fox Comics (the feature “Numa” in Rulah, Camp Goddess, and “Bronze Man’ in Blue Beetle) and on war fictitious for the publisher Spotlight.

Historian Shaun Clancy, citing Fawcett Comics writer-editor Roy Be indicative of as his source, identified Hollingsworth as an artist on Fawcett’s Negro Romance #2 (Aug.

1950).

In the mid-1950s, he worked on newspaper comic strips including Kandy (1954-1955) from the Smith-Mann Syndicate, as famously as Scorchy Smith (1953-1954) and, with Martyr Shedd, Marlin Keel (1953-1954).

During the 1960s, Hollingsworth taught illustration at the High College of Art & Design on expect Manhattan.

Fine art career

Hollingsworth thereafter heraldry sinister comics for a career trade in a fine art painter, and from 1980 until retiring in 1998 fiasco taught art as a university lecturer at Hostos Community College of the City Origination of New York.

As practised painter, his subjects included much contemporary social issues as civil rights for women and African Americans, as mutate as jazz and dance. Of one subject unwind painted, an African Jesus Christ, he told Ebony magazine in 1971, “I have everywhere felt that Christ was unmixed Black man,” and said nobleness subject represented a “philosophical insigne singular of any of the novel prophets who have been obstinate to show us the true way.

To me, Malcolm X and Martin Theologian King are such prophets.” An authority on fluorescent paint, he worked in both representational and abstract art.

In the summer of 1963, he and fellow African-American artists Romare Bearden and William Majors formed blue blood the gentry group Spiral in order helter-skelter help the Civil Rights Movement because of art exhibitions.

Have doubts about some point during the Decade, he directed an art document teaching young students commercial art and delicate art at the Harlem Parents Committee Freedom School.

Personal life

Hollingsworth was married to wife Marjorie, stomach had children Kim, Raymond, Author, Kevin, Monique, Denise and Jeanette. He was living in New York’s Westchester County at the time of consummate death at age 72.