Untitledc. 198023 x 25 " (58.4 x 63.5 cm)House paint on plywoodGift of Ron and June Shelp2013.5.1101551234556Mose TolliverPaintings© Estate of Mose Tolliver / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkMontgomeryMontgomeryUnited StatesAlabamaPaintingsMontgomery
In a 1987 interview with William Arnett, Mose Tolliver recounts creating his first paintings as a teenager in Montgomery, Alabama. Tolliver was in the landscaping business, and he would source surfaces to paint on at various job sites, collecting tree stumps and roots, discarded wood, glass, furniture, and metal, and even cow bone to use as the canvases for his art. Like Untitled (c. 1980), Tolliver’s subjects tended toward the natural world—flora, fauna, animals, and birds, rendered abstract in bright, otherworldly hues created from oil or latex-based house paint. Other popular subjects included portraits, fantastic human-animal hybrids, and a series of overtly sexual works the artist termed his "nasty pictures," all depicted in Tolliver’s signature material and formal aesthetic—a compelling merger of found fragments and sophisticated yet dreamy palette.
In the 1960s, Tolliver was injured at work, and the accident left him unable to walk without assistance. Unemployed, he was able to turn to painting fulltime. Tolliver sold his art from his home and, in the early-1980s, the work caught the attention of a curator at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, who featured Tolliver in a solo exhibition in 1981.Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org19751985 2013 5 11
In a 1987 interview with William Arnett, Mose Tolliver recounts creating his first paintings as a teenager in Montgomery, Alabama. Tolliver was in the landscaping business, and he would source surfaces to paint on at various job sites, collecting tree stumps and roots, discarded wood, glass, furniture, and metal, and even cow bone to use as the canvases for his art. Like Untitled (c. 1980), Tolliver’s subjects tended toward the natural world—flora, fauna, animals, and birds, rendered abstract in bright, otherworldly hues created from oil or latex-based house paint. Other popular subjects included portraits, fantastic human-animal hybrids, and a series of overtly sexual works the artist termed his "nasty pictures," all depicted in Tolliver’s signature material and formal aesthetic—a compelling merger of found fragments and sophisticated yet dreamy palette.
In the 1960s, Tolliver was injured at work, and the accident left him unable to walk without assistance. Unemployed, he was able to turn to painting fulltime. Tolliver sold his art from his home and, in the early-1980s, the work caught the attention of a curator at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, who featured Tolliver in a solo exhibition in 1981.Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org