Bill Traylor
Bill Traylor, an African American, self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama, is now regarded as one of the most important American artists of the 20th century. Born into slavery, Traylor spent most of his life (after emancipation) as a sharecropper. At the age of 85 he started to document his recollections and observations. From 1939 to 1942, homeless, while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, he produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art. His work began to receive broader attention in the late 1970s, 30 years after his death.
Traylor made utterly original drawings on found scraps of cardboard. He penciled, and later began to paint, crisp silhouette figures of people and animals. There were also hieratic abstractions of simple forms. His drawings depict his experiences and observations of rural and urban life in pared-down repeated symbols, shapes, and figures. It is a unique combination of Modernism and Naive art.
P.S. To continue our celebration of Black History Month let's meet more artists! Do you know Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African American artist who became internationally successful?