“Mother of Jamaican art” Edna Manley, daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother, emigrated to Jamaica with her husband Norman Manley, the country’s future first prime minister. She was a sculptor as well as a painter, and experimented with a variety of materials, from plaster and bronze to wood and stone, going through several artistic periods. Her work revolutionized the art world in the Caribbean region and many of her sculptures became icons of the movement for self-determination for black Jamaicans. In 1950 she founded the first art school in Kingston, which was renamed the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in her honor in 1995.
