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Mose Tolliver, ca. 1919-2006
Art in America, Jan, 2007 by David Ebony
Mose Tolliver, about 87, a key self-taught artist whose stylized figurative paintings were instrumental in gaining international recognition for Outsider artists of the American South. Born ca. 1919 near Montgomery, Ala., Mose T, as he is better known, began painting images on tree stumps as a teenager.
After he was crippled by a work accident in the 1960s, he resumed painting full-time at home. Using house paints on small found plywood panels, he developed an extensive visual vocabulary of colorful abstracted figures. Unlike many of the South's folk artists, Mose T did not center his work on biblical themes. Instead, he was inspired by his immediate surroundings, concentrating on recurring motifs based on human, animal and plant forms. For years, he displayed the works in his yard, often hanging them with metal rings from soda- and beer-can pull tops. After his paintings were featured in the Corcoran Gallery's 1982 show "Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980," Mose T began to exhibit in folk-art galleries throughout the country and abroad, and in important museum shows of Outsider art. In later years he was assisted by a number of his children, especially Annie Tolliver, who became an accomplished artist in her own right. Recently, his paintings were included in the museum survey "Testimony: Vernacular Art of the African-American South," which debuted at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Mich., in 2000, and toured the country for several years.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
