Alma W. Thomas, born in 1891, grew up in rural Georgia. To escape racist violence in that state, her family moved to Washington, D.C., where she attended high school and then went on to receive a degree in fine arts from Howard University. For 35 years after that Thomas taught art at the Shaw Junior High School—it was a long gestation period. When she retired from teaching, in 1960, her career as an artist began. Abstract and focused on color, her vision was born whole. In 1972, a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum brought Thomas renown. “Through color,” she said, ​”I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.” This exhibition focuses on Thomas’s late-in-life burst of artistic energy, from 1959 to 1978 (the year of her death). The Smithsonian holds the largest collection of Thomas paintings in the world. —Elena Clavarino