Rex Goreleigh

Russell "Rex" Gordon Goreleigh (1902 – 1986) was an African-American painter and arts educator.

Goreleigh taught arts classes for the Works Progress Administration and was active in the arts communities of Chicago, Illinois, New York City, and Princeton, New Jersey.

Much of his work depicts the African American experience.

Early life and education

Goreleigh was born in Penllyn, Pennsylvania where his mother was a housemaid for a local doctor. He studied art as a child.

Goreleigh moved to Philadelphia at the age of 15 upon his mother's death and went on to finish high school in Washington, D.C.. At 18, he moved to New York City where he studied acting at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem.

Career

Goreleigh attended exhibitions at the Harmon Foundation which inspired him to take up drawing and painting.

He met Diego Rivera while working in a restaurant. Rivera invited to Goreleigh to watch him work on murals he was creating for the Rockefeller family. Goreleigh also became acquainted with artists of the Harlem Renaissance including Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden.

Goreleigh worked for the Federal Art Project, a project for the Works Progress Administration, through which he taught art to children at the Utopia Neighborhood House in New York.

In 1936, Goreleigh traveled to Europe and studied with Andre Lhote in Paris and Leo Z. Moll in Germany. He returned to Harlem and taught art at the YMCA. He then moved to Greensboro, North Carolina in 1938. While there, he taught art at the Agricultural and Technical State University of North Carolina and Bennett College for Women and opened an arts center with artist Norman Lewis. The center was based in the Carnegie Negro Library.

In 1939, his watercolors were featured in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Contemporary Negro Art exhibition.

Goreleigh moved to Chicago in 1940 and managed the Works Progress Administration's South Side Community Art Center. He also produced art for a local advertising agency. His work was featured in the 1940 Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro at Chicago's Tanner Art Galleries.

Goreleigh moved to Princeton, New Jersey in 1947 to serve as the first director of Princeton Group Arts. The organization was founded by the local Jewish and Quaker communities to promote racial and religious integration through the arts. The center closed in 1954 due to a lack of funding.

Goreleigh established the Studio-on-the-Canal, a Princeton-based arts center with workshops in painting, printmaking, and ceramics. Painter Hughie Lee-Smith attended classes at the studio.

Goreleigh went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University. He was the head of the Roosevelt Public School arts program and taught at the Princeton Adult School, the Neuropsychiatric Institute, and the Trenton school district. He served on the Princeton Arts Council’s Board of Trustees from 1969 to 1972.

Collections

• University of Alabama Paul R. Jones Collection
• Harriet and Harmon Kelley Collection of African-American Art
• The Petrucci Family Foundation
• University of Delaware
• New Jersey State Museum.
• The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art
• Woodmere Art Museum
• The Studio Museum of Harlem