Alma Thomas, born in Georgia, was a pioneering African American artist known for her vibrant abstract paintings and her significant contributions to the Color Field movement. As a teenager, she moved with her family to Washington D.C., seeking better educational opportunities and escaping the racial violence of her native Georgia. As a young girl, Thomas dreamed of becoming an architect, but societal constraints of the time for women in that field led her to a teaching career. In 1924, she made history as the first woman to graduate in fine arts from Howard University.

Thomas taught visual arts for thirty-five years at Shaw Junior High School, where she vigorously encouraged her students' creativity through the organization of art clubs and exhibitions, although she sporadically exhibited her own work.

After retiring, Thomas fully embraced gestural abstraction. Her works, mosaics of colorful patches, illustrate her macroscopic vision of nature, detached from the political struggles of her time, aspiring to transcendental art. In 1972, she became the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Her groundbreaking work helped to challenge prevailing stereotypes about African American artists and opened doors for future generations of artists of colour.