Eldzier Cortor, painter and printmaker, was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1916. As the Great Migration swept northward, the Cortor family relocated to Chicago soon after Eldzier was born, seeking employment in the city's industrial manufacturing centers. Cortor studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1930s
under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy where he developed an interest in painting, particularly techniques associated with Surrealism. However, African art, which he studied under the tutelage of the Art Institute’s Kathleen Blackshear, proved to be a principle influence on the tenor of his work. Cortor’s art advocated for a dignified view of African-American culture. His portraits of Black life mixed the realism of domestic scenes with a sense of fantasy through distorted perspectives. His depictions of African-American women in particular defined his practice, as many of his paintings and drawings depict silhouettes of Black figures with both African and Surrealist impulses. In the 1940s, Cortor worked with the Works Progress Administration in his South Chicago community, traveled
and taught through the Caribbean on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and worked with the Gullah communities in coastal Georgia and South Carolina. The latter experience influenced a practice that championed and upheld the African roots of African American culture.In recent years, the artist's work has become more renowned. In 2002,
his solo show Eldzier Cortor: Master Printmaker was exhibited at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. In 2006, his career as a master printmaker and draftsman was celebrated in the exhibition Black Spirit: Work on Paper by Eldzier Cortor organized by the Indiana University Art Museum. Cortor's works are held in the collec-
tions of Howard University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The Art Institute of Chicago, among others.