William Pajaud

• Name — William Etienne "Bill" Pajaud • Born — 3 August 1925 • Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana U.S. • Died — 16 June 2015 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Occupation — Painter, artist • Known for — Paintings exploring themes of Jazz

William Pajaud's father was a jazz musician, whose main source of income was working at funerals. His mother was a trained pharmacist, but, as an African American woman, found it difficult to find work. Pajaud earned a fine arts degree from Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans in 1941. Pajaud moved to Chicago in the early 1940s, where he took work as a sign painter and designer. In 1949 he moved to Los Angeles to study graphic design at Chouinard Art Institute.

Pajaud was a member of the Society of Graphic Designers, the Los Angeles County Art Association, and the National Watercolor Society, of which he served as president from 1974 to 1975. He was part of the artists' collective Eleven Associated (later Art West Association). This Los Angeles artists' co-op included artists Beulah Woodard, Alice Taylor Gafford and Tyrus Wong. Pajaud's watercolors featured imagery inspired by his childhood in New Orleans and his adult life in Chicago and Los Angeles: full-figured African American women, jazz funerals, street scenes.

Pajaud was the adviser for the acquisition of artworks for the black-owned Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, for whom he had worked since 1957 in design and public relations. In 1965, with a modest budget, he began to acquire the artworks of fellow African-American artists including Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Betye Saar, Elizabeth Catlett, Richmond Barthé, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Varnette P. Honeywood, David Hammons, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Samella Lewis, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Willie Middlebrook. The collection also included several of Pajaud's own works. At more than 200 works, it became the largest U.S. collection of corporate-owned African American art. Pajaud stated that the collection was the thing of which he was proudest in his career. A large proportion of the collection was auctioned in 2007 when the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company went out of business. 124 of the works from the collection were acquired by Los Angeles County after Pajaud put out a plea to 'Take care of the work and take care of the concept of the people. If, for instance, you are able to get your hands on a piece of that work, any of it, realize that all of it was put together in love, for you and anybody else in the world to see.' Several of these works are on view at the AC Bilbrew Library, the Willowbrook Senior Center, the View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library, and the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration.