'Hoppy Shows Initiative' (The Saint #6, 1947).
Alvin C. Hollingsworth was an American fine art painter, cartoonist and educator, who began his career in the 1940s and 1950s drawing mostly for crime, horror and young romance comics. Along with Matt Baker, he was one of the few African-American artists in the early years of the American comic book industry. After a stint in magazine cartooning and newspaper comics, most notably with his own 'Kandy' strip (1954-1955), Hollingsworth pursued a career in fine art. Using art for civic engagement, he was a driving force of the Spiral art group and became a prominent artist in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Early life
Alvin Carl Hollingsworth was born in 1928 in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, New York City, as the second son of a family of British West Indian origins. Emigrated from Barbados to the United States in the late 1910s, his father Charles was a shipping clerk at a dress house, and his mother Cynthia a presser in a dress factory. Fond of drawing since age four, Alvin Hollingsworth began his career at the early age of twelve, working at the Holyoke Publishing Company as an errand boy and art assistant on the Cat-man Comics comic book by Charles Quinlan and Allen Ulmer. Another youngster who was also working in the comic book industry was Joe Kubert, two years older, who became an influence on Hollingsworth's work. On a suggestion by Kubert, Hollingsworth enrolled at Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, where he graduated in 1946. Other influences besides Kubert were his West Indian and Caribbean heritage, and the African-American culture of his Harlem neighborhood, with its jazz, poetry, murals, sculptures, and paintings. Between 1950 and 1952, Hollingsworth continued his art studies at the Art Students League of New York. At City University of New York, he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1956, and got a Masters of Arts in 1959.
'Suicide Smith' (Wing Comics #105, May 1949).
Comic books
During his high school and university years, Alvin Hollingsworth continued to work for comic book publishers, staying in the industry throughout the 1940s and 1950s. After working through the Binder Studio (early 1940s) and the Bernard Baily Studio (mid-1940s), he was eventually able to find assignments on his own. He also spent some time working for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's studio. As most comic books were uncredited at the time, precise records of his contributions are unknown, but some of his stories were signed "Al Hollingsworth", "A. H.", "Alvin Holly" and possibly also "Alec Hope".
It is believed that already in the early 1940s, the teenage Hollingsworth was working on crime comics. One of his earliest known credits is a 7-page crime story in issue #31 of Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay comic book, titled 'Million Dollar Robbery' (1944). Other confirmed early work include his work for Contact Comics by Aviation Press. If Hollingsworth was indeed the artist credited as "Alec Hope", he was then also present in the Fox Comics titles All Top Comics and All Good Comics, drawing characters like 'Captain V' and 'Puppeteer', both still in 1944. He continued to appear in Fox titles until the 1950s, drawing 'Bronze Man', 'The Purple Tigress', 'Inspector Roc's Felony Files' and other features in both Blue Beetle and Jo-Jo Comics. Hollingsworth also worked on crime stories for Fox's Crimes By Women, All Top Comics, Murder Incorporated, Famous Crimes and Martin Kane, Private Eye. In the second half of the 1940s, his work for Fiction House included features like 'Wambi, the Jungle Boy' and 'Simba, King of Beasts' in Jungle Comics, and many stories with 'Suicide Smith' in Wing Comics.
'Witches Feast at Dawn' (Dark Mysteries #9, October-November 1952).
Up until the mid-1950s, Alvin Hollingsworth worked for various comic book companies, mostly on genre titles. Between 1948 and 1953, he was present at Avon Comics with a great many horror stories for titles like Strange Worlds, Witchcraft, City of the Living Dead, Eerie, Diary of Horror, and Night of Mystery, but also as a story artist for the comic book version of Leslie Charteris' 'The Saint'. He further did crime comics for Prize Comics (Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty), Star Publications (All-Famous Police Cases), Story Comics (Fight Against Crime), Ribage (Crime Mysteries) and Premier Magazines (Nuts!, Police Against Crime), and also worked on romance stories for Star Publications (True-to-Life Romances, Confessions of Love), Fawcett (Negro Romance) and Ribage (Youthful Romances). Hollingsworth delved into horror and suspense for Toby Press (Tales of Horror), Story Comics (Mysterious Adventures), Master Comics (Dark Mysteries), Trojan Magazines (Beware) and Premier Magazines (Mysterious Stories), and did war comics for Quality Comics (G.I. Combat), Charlton (Fightin' Navy) and Stanley Morse (Battle Cry). On a more sporadic basis, the appeared at least once or twice in comic books by Temerson (Captain Aero Comics), the American Comics Group (Blazing West), Ace Magazines (Western Magazines), Youthful Magazines (Indian Fighter, Magic Arrow) and Eastern Color Printing (Juke Box Comics).
'Possessed' (Negro Romance #2, August 1950). The story is believed to be drawn by Alvin Hollingsworth. Negro Romance was a Fawcett comic book focusing on African-American romance stories, which remarkably enough for their time period avoided racial stereotypes.
Newspaper comics: assistance work
By the second half of the 1950s, Hollingsworth's work had shifted towards newspaper comics and magazine cartooning. Between 28 September 1953 and 7 August 1954, he drew the aviation newspaper adventure strip 'Scorchy Smith' for the Associated Press, which he took over from Rodlow Willard. He was presumably also an assistant on George Shedd's nautical adventure feature 'Marlin Keel' (1953-1954) at the Post-Hall Syndicate.
Newspaper comics: Kandy
Between 25 September 1954 and 22 October 1955, Hollingsworth had his own Sunday strip 'Kandy'. Distributed to black newspapers through the Pittsburgh Courier/Smith-Mann Syndicate, it was an action-filled romance adventure serial with the backdrop of professional auto racing and corporate espionage, starring the smart, young and independent black woman Kandy MacKay, an engineer, and the black competitive race car driver Rod Stone.
Magazine work in the late 1950s
In 1958 and 1959, Hollingsworth drew funny parody stories for the MAD-inspired humor magazine Thimk, published by Counterpoint. Around the same time, he also appeared with gag cartoons in TV Girls and Gags magazine by Pocket Magazines, and as an illustrator for adventure magazines like Men and Man's World edited by Bruce Jay Friedman for Martin Goodman's Magazine Management company.
'Kandy' (The Pittsburgh Courier, 2 July 1955).
Fine art painter
As the 1950s progressed into the 1960s, Alvin C. Hollingsworth began to make his mark as a fine art painter. In the late 1950s, he had documented the many building stages of New York's Guggenheim Museum in a series of paintings. In 1961, he had his first solo exhibition, called 'Exodus', at the Ward Eggleston Gallery in New York City. In addition to another solo exhibition at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in 1965, Hollingsworth's work was part of group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During this period, his artwork also appeared in the publication Manhattan East.
'Trapped', from the 'Cry City' series (1965).
As a painter of the Beat Generation, Hollingsworth's trademark was the use of fluorescent materials, which under ultraviolet light, produced atmospheric effects. In the late 1960s, he collaborated with electronic music pioneer Edgard Varèse to create a large multi-media work that provided sensory experience for the spectators. Working in both representational and abstract art, recurring subject matters included social issues like civil rights for women and African Americans, jazz musicians and dance, but also the subconscious and dreams. Between 1961 and 1965, his engagement was best reflected in the 'Cry City' series of mixed media paintings, which captured "the violence and erosive spirit of the city through its walls".
Together with fellow African-American artists Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis and William Majors, he was an important member of the Spiral Group, a coalition of black artists exploring the relationship of art and activism. Between 1963 and 1965, the group organized several exhibitions to support the Civil Rights Movement. In the late 1960s, Hollingsworth was also a participant in the New York mural movement, where artists brought art directly into their communities. Hollingsworth, for instance, was responsible for a 1970s series of murals for the Don Quixote Apartment Building in the Bronx, New York. Around the same time, he created a series of lithographs and paintings depicting the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. In the spring of 1970, he also completed a mural for the Paul Robeson Lounge at Rutgers University. For a painting he made of a black Jesus Christ, he was portrayed in the April 1971 issue of Ebony magazine.
One of Alvin Hollingsworth's 'Don Quixote' lithographs.
Instructor
Between 1961 and 1971, Hollingsworth taught illustration at the High School of Art & Design in Manhattan, and additionally taught at the Pan American Art School. From 1966 to 1967, Hollingsworth also directed an art program teaching young students commercial art and fine art at the Harlem Parents Committee Freedom School. Subsequently, he spent two years as director at the Lincoln Institute of Psycho-Therapy Art Gallery, followed by an additional one-year role as supervisor of art at Project Turn-On, in New York. From 1969 to 1975, he was a painting instructor at the Art Students League. From 1971 until his retirement in 1998, he was an art professor at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.
He wrote and hosted three television series: 'You're Part of Art' (1971), 'You’ve Gotta Have Art' (1977) and 'The Creative Years of the Child' (1980), bringing art to the community through mass media. He also shared his craft as co-author of the book 'Art of Acrylic Painting' (Grumbacher, 1969) and as author and illustrator of 'I'd Like the Goo-gen-heim' (Reilly & Lee Books, 1970), through which he introduces young readers to modern art. This latter book was reprinted posthumously in 2009. Other books illustrated by Hollingsworth were 'The Sniper' (McGraw, 1969), Arnold Adoff 's 'Black Out Loud: An Anthology of Modern Poems by Black Americans' (MacMillan, 1970) and 'Journey' (1970), a book part of Scholastic Books' Black Literature series.
Recognition
Alvin Hollingsworth was the 1963 recipient of the Emily Lowe Award, and in the following year, of the Whitney Foundation Award. In 1971, he additionally received the Award of Distinction from the Smith-Mason Gallery. His art has been included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Death
With his wife Marjorie, Alvin Hollingsworth had seven children, four daughters and three sons. He spent his final years living in New York's Westchester County, and died in 2000 at the age of 72.
Alvin C. Hollingsworth in 1969 (The Daily Register, 26 June 1969).