An intimate portrait of unique African-American who saw fame in his own lifetime after a disaster caused him to pick up a paintbrush.
The photographs , the art work, and poignant quotes by Mose offer powerful images, touching the South¹s natural soul.
Anton Haardt lets us see beyond the artist into the personality of a complex man who took defeat and turned it into victory.
It is a great book for fans of Mose, aficionados of folk art, curious readers everywhere and libraries daring to blend art school painters with untrained artistic genius.
In the winter of 1982, the American art world was jolted by a controversial exhibition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The morning after the opening reception, art editors questioned in newspapers across the country, "Is this art?"
This groundbreaking exhibition, Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980, brought together for the first time the work of America¹s greatest living folk art masters. The exhibition¹s organizer, Robert Bishop, even went so far as to declare that the work of one artist in particular was of "equal value" to Picasso¹s, suggesting that "you can hang him beside a Picasso and you have the same creativity and deep personal vision."
That artist is the subject of a book by Montgomery native Anton Haardt, entitled Mose T. from A to Z: The Folk Art of Mose Tolliver. Available now, this full-color,
100-page volume is the first to be devoted entirely to the life and work of the last surviving artist from the Corcoran exhibition.
In it Ms. Haardt relates the story of Mose Tolliver¹s turn to painting after a crippling accident left him unable to work. She charts the evolution of his career, from the days when he hung his paintings in a tree in his front yard in Montgomery, Alabama, selling them for a dollar each, through his rise to renown in the folk art world and far beyond. Additional essay contributions from scholars Lee Kogan and Regenia Perry situate Tolliver¹s work within the history of American folk art and discuss the stylistic originality of this visionary American artist.
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