John Wilson
Painter, sculptor, and printmaker John Wilson was born in Roxbury, Boston in 1922 to a family of middle class blacks from Guyana. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and studied in Paris with Fernand Leger. He moved to Mexico on a fellowship to study with the Mexican muralists and lived there from 1950-56. Wilson taught art at Boston University from 1965-86 and set up a visual arts program for the Boston black community in the late 1960s-1970s. Among his better-known works is the massive sculpture “Eternal Presence” at the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Boston. Wilson combines influences such as the bold, sculptural forms of the Mexican muralists, the scale and presence of Pre-Columbian Olmec heads, and the serene energy of the Buddha statues. He also created the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. commissioned for the Capitol grounds in Washington D.C.