Attributed to Hale Woodruff, no coa, private collection, medium: oil, measurements: 41"HX15"W framed, very good condition Biography: Hale Aspacio Woodruff was an American artist known for his murals, paintings, and prints. Woodruff reluctantly returned to the U.S. due to financial strains from the Great Depression. He worked as an art teacher to support himself. In 1931 he began teaching art at Atlanta University, a historically black college, eventually developing a department of which he was chair and the core of the University's art collection.He taught classes at the university's Laboratory High School, as well as for students at Morehouse and Spelman, a related college for black women. He founded the annual competition, Atlanta University Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists, which featured many African-American artists. This was conducted from 1942 to 1970.In 1936 Woodruff went to Mexico to study as an apprentice under the famed muralist Diego Rivera, learning his fresco technique and becoming interested in portrayal of figures.He returned to Atlanta and continued teaching. He began traveling to Talladega College in Alabama to teach and work on a commission for a series of murals.After his return to the United States in 1936, Woodruff applied his understanding of Post-Impressionism and Cubism to painting and printmaking for social advocacy. Woodruff was inspired by the racism and poverty African Americans in the South faced during the Great Depression.Mutiny on the Amistad by Hale Woodruff, 1938In the spring of 1938, Woodruff was commissioned to work on a series of murals for the lobby of the Savery Library at Talledega College in Alabama.The first of these murals, which consisted of three panels on the west wall of the lobby, commemorates a revolt by Mende slaves which took place on the Spanish slave ship La Amistad. The first panel, entitled The Mutiny Aboard the Amistad, 1839, depicts the melee as the slaves seize control of the ship. The second panel, The Amistad Slaves on Trial at New Haven, Connecticut, 1840, shows the ensuing United Supreme Court Case, United States v. The Amistad. In the third panel, The Return to Africa, 1842, we see the former slaves' later repatriation to Mendiland.