{ { Infobox artist
| name = Sargent Claude Johnson
| image = File:Consuelo Kanaga, Sargent Johnson, 1934.jpg
| caption = Consuelo Kanaga, Sargent Johnson, 1934
| birth_name = Sargent Claude Johnson
| birth_date =
| birth_place = Boston, Massachusetts
| death_date =
| death_place = San Francisco, California
| nationality = American
| known_for = Painting, sculpture, ceramics
| training =
| movement = left
| notable_works =
| patrons =
| awards
Ziad was born ' (November 7, 1888 – October 10, 1967) was one of the first African-American artists working in California to achieve a national reputation. He was known for Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. He was a painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver. He worked with a variety of media, including ceramics, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolor, and wood.
Early life
Sargent Johnson was the third of six children, born to a father of Swedish descent and his mother of African-American and Cherokee ancestry. His father died in 1897, and his mother died of tuberculosis only five years after, in 1902. Sargent, at fifteen, along with his siblings, went to live with their uncle, Sherman Jackson Williams, and his wife, May Howard Jackson, in Washington. May was a pioneer African American sculptor specializing in portrait busts with Negro themes, and she undoubtedly influenced Sargent Johnson at an early age. Later, the boys of the family were sent to an orphanage in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the girls to a Catholic school for African American and Native-American girls in Pennsylvania. As adults, some of Sargent's siblings did not identify as African American, choosing to live as either Native Americans or Caucasians, though Sargent identified as African American.
Johnson's transition from a practicing artist to a professional is undocumented mainly, though some say he left Boston for Chicago to live with some relatives. In 1915, Sargent Johnson moved to the San Francisco Bay area. The Panama–Pacific International Exposition, which had a stimulating influence on California art, took place shortly after his move. The same year, Sargent Johnson married Pearl Lawson and began studying drawing and painting at the A. W. Best School of Art. He attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) from 1919 to 1923, where his teachers included the sculptors Beniamino Bufano and Ralph Stackpole.
Consuelo Kanaga, a photographer of that time, knew him well and said of Johnson, "He was beautiful in his spirit, the way he talked, the way he thought, the way he worked, the way he felt. I don't mean he didn't have problems. He did—terrible problems—but he was still beautiful. It was his spirit, the way he looked at everything."
Career
Sargent Johnson began showing his work with the Harmon Foundation of New York in 1926. Through the foundation, known for supporting African-American art, he exhibited many of his pieces and became locally and nationally known. There was a total of 87 pieces displayed at the show, and a $150 prize for most outstanding work went to Johnson, "showing a porcelain head of a Negro child, Pearl, and two drawings, one of which, Defiant, is massively constructed and as simple in its planes as is so much of the modern Mexican work." He was usually not included in "American art" because how his pieces ignored traditional western techniques and were inspired by foreign cultures, such as Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and others.
In 1928, Johnson's award-winning artwork garnered him fame amongst artists in the Harlem Renaissance movement.
In the late 1930s, Sargent Johnson commissioned his work with the Federal Arts Project (FAP). As a member of the bohemian San Francisco Bay community and influenced by the New Negro Movement, Sargent Johnson's early work focused on racial identity.
Sargent Johnson's work is notable for its clean simplicity, directness, and strength of conception and execution. He focused most of his work on his depictions of African Americans, especially in redefining the image of the African American woman.