DeCarava learned to make screenprints while working in the poster division of the Works Progress Administration, and adapted the WPA’s use of bold color and flat shapes for his own compositions. He drew his subject matter from the Harlem community where he lived and worked. These prints depict people and landscapes from daily life, but emphasize unexpected vantage points and geometric detail. The photographs that he took as source material for these images would ultimately become the artist’s main interest. DeCarava stopped making prints altogether in the late 1940s and is today best known for his photography.
2025
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Roy DeCarava
American, 1919–2009 22 works onlineBorn in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1919, Roy DeCarava came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, when artistic activity and achievement among African Americans flourished across the literary, musical, dramatic, and visual arts.
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