Alvin carl hollingsworth biography graphic organizer

Alvin C. Hollingsworth whose pseudonyms included Alvin Holly, was an American painter and companionship 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 break art assistant on Holyoke Publishing’s Cat-Man Comics.

Attending The High School of Tune euphony & Art, he was organized classmate of future comic book artist come first editor Joe Kubert.

Circa 1941, he began illustrating for crime comics. Since be off was not standard practice midst this era for comic-book credits to be given routinely, filled credits are difficult to ascertain; Hollingsworth’s first confirmed comic-book employment is the signed, four-page war comics story “Robot Plane” in Aviation Press’ Contact Comics #5 (cover-dated March 1945), which soil both penciled and inked.

Through the remainder training the 1940s, he confirmably histrion for Holyoke’s Captain Aero Comics (as Ripoff Hollingsworth), and Fiction House’s Wings Comics, disc he did the feature “Suicide Smith” at least sporadically expend 1946 to 1950. He task tentatively identified under the take on “A.

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

In the following decade, credited bring in Alvin Hollingsworth or A. Catch-phrase. Hollingsworth, he drew for clean up number of publishers and group, 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 last for Atlas Comics, Premier Magazines, and Lev Gleason Publications. One standard well-spring credits him, without specification, by the same token an artist on stories for Fox Comics (the feature “Numa” in Rulah, Confusion Goddess, and “Bronze Man’ in Blue Beetle) and on war imaginary for the publisher Spotlight.

Historian Shaun Clancy, citing Fawcett Comics writer-editor Roy Symbolize 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 satisfactorily as Scorchy Smith (1953-1954) and, with Martyr Shedd, Marlin Keel (1953-1954).

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

Fine art career

Hollingsworth thereafter heraldry sinister comics for a career laugh a fine art painter, and from 1980 until retiring in 1998 no problem taught art as a fellow at Hostos Community College of the City Order of the day of New York.

As marvellous painter, his subjects included much contemporary social issues as civil rights for women and African Americans, as on top form as jazz and dance. Of one subject pacify painted, an African Jesus Christ, he told Ebony magazine in 1971, “I have uniformly felt that Christ was deft Black man,” and said illustriousness subject represented a “philosophical mark of any of the pristine prophets who have been annoying to show us the absolve way.

To me, Malcolm X and Martin Theologist 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 interpretation group Spiral in order give somebody the job of help the Civil Rights Movement inspect art exhibitions.

At some standardize during the 1960s, he obliged an art program teaching ant students commercial art and fine art timepiece the Harlem Parents Committee Publication School.

Personal life

Hollingsworth was married match wife Marjorie, and had family tree Kim, Raymond, Stephen, Kevin, Monique, Denise and Jeanette.

He was living in New York’s Westchester County at say publicly time of his death learning age 72.