Norman Wilfred Lewis, born in New York City, studied with Augusta Savage at the Savage School (1933) and at Columbia University (c. 1933-1935). During the Depression, Lewis taught art through the Federal Arts Project (1936-1939) at the Harlem Community Art Center and later with Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White at George Washington Carver School. Although Lewis joined the Artists Union and was an ardent political activist, he believed that “political and social aspects should not be the primary concern; esthetic ideas should have preference.” His work of the late 1930s and early 1940s was predominately figurative social realism concentrating on the lives of urban black families. In the mid-1940s, Lewis, represented by Willard Gallery in New York City, had developed his own personal calligraphic style. In 1955, Lewis received the Carnegie International Award in Painting for Migrant Birds, making him the first African-American artist to receive this prestigious prize. Lewis was a founding member of the Spiral Group (1963-1966) and in 1969, along with Romare Bearden and ernest Crichlow, founded Cinque Gallery. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts (1972) and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1975), Lewis received his first retrospective exhibition in 1976 at the Graduate Center of City College, New York.