What the small size of Augusta Savage’s sculptures tells us

Though the sculpture itself is quite small, the textured surface of American sculptor Augusta Savage’s bust of a young Black girl creates a sophisticated play of light and shadow. A sculptor, art educator, and community program director, Savage’s most valuable commodity was time. Rather than sacrifice her craft, she compromised on scale, with much of her work measuring on the smaller side. In SLAM’s collection, Untitled (Girl with Pigtails) stands just 8 1/4 inches tall.  

The bronze sculpture is on view in Gallery 333. 

Savage, who became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was born near Jacksonville, Florida, in 1892. Despite her father’s “ardent and sometimes violent disapproval” of her love of art, according to scholar Lisa Farrington, Savage was drawn to figure sculpting at a young age, producing animal figurines out of local red clay. Encouraged by her high school principal, she taught clay modeling to her classmates and in 1919, successfully exhibited her first sculptures at the West Palm Beach County Fair. 

She moved to New York City in 1921, armed with a letter of recommendation from the superintendent of the West Palm Beach Fair and $4.60 in her pocket (the equivalent of around $80 today). Later that year, she was accepted into The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. There, she studied under American sculptor George Thomas Brewster, who designed 11 of the medallions of influential artists on the Saint Louis Art Museum’s exterior. She later studied under Herman MacNeil, the sculptor who designed the Museum’s facade relief, Ars Artium Omnium (Apotheosis of Art).

After completing a four-year degree program in three years, Savage solidified her reputation as an artist, living and working out of a small studio apartment in Harlem. In the mid-1920s, she became “as committed to social activism as she was to art,” according to Farrington. Living in the epicenter of the Harlem Renaissance, Savage was constantly surrounded and supported by some of the era’s most forward Pan-Africanist thinkers. 

As her career developed, she received grants to study in France, Belgium, and Germany. She established her own studio in Harlem in 1932, titled the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, where she offered a variety of classes. In 1936, she was appointed assistant supervisor for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, a New Deal program to revitalize the arts, while serving the Harlem Artists Guild. The artist became increasingly involved in arts, politics, administration, and teaching, including becoming the Harlem Community Art Center’s first director.

During her career, Savage created many relatively small sculptures, including the work in SLAM’s collection. Sculpted c.1931–40, the untitled bust of the girl with pigtails conveys a sweetness without sentimentality. Despite the small size, the treatment of the surface enlivens the young girl’s expression, creating a complex psychology that shifts, as children do, from tender innocence to cautious reserve. Untitled is a rare bronze-cast Savage sculpture. Many of her other works were made from plaster painted a bronze color, a less expensive alternative to casting in bronze. 

Other palm-sized Savage sculptures include Gamin, a solemn, sensitive youth in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection; busts of scholars and activists W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey; and the pair Musician and Dancer at the Art Institute of Chicago. Despite living a hard and fast-paced life, many of Savage’s works are personified portrayals of sensitivity and softness. 

Other Harlem Renaissance artists in SLAM’s collection include Romare Bearden, Sargent Johnson, Archibald Motley, and James Van Der Zee.