Horace Pippin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Horace Pippin (February 22, 1888 – July 6, 1946) was a self-taught African-American painter who worked in a naive style. The injustice of slavery and American segregation figure prominently in many of his works.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Goshen, New York. There he attended segregated schools until he was 15, when he went to work to support his ailing mother.[1] Pippin served in the 369th infantry in Europe during World War I, where he lost the use of his right arm. He said of his combat experience:
I did not care what or where I went at. I asked God to help me, and he did so. And that is the way I came through that terrible and Hellish place. For the whole entire battlfield was hell, so it was no place for any human being to be.[2]
His activity as a painter did not begin in earnest until 1930. One of his best-known paintings, his Self-portrait of 1941, shows him seated in front of an easel, cradling his brush in his right hand (he used his left arm to guide his injured right arm when painting). His painting of John Brown Going to his Hanging (1942) is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Among Pippin's works are many genre paintings, such as the Domino Players (1943), in the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., and several versions of Cabin in the Cotton. His portraits include a depiction of the contralto Marian Anderson singing, painted in 1941. He also painted landscapes and religious subjects.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Forgey, Benjamin, 1977, "Horace Pippin's 'personal spiritual journey'", ARTnews 76 (Summer 1977): pp. 74-xx
- "Pippin, Horace." Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, volume 15, copyright 1991. Grolier Inc., ISBN 0-7172-5300-7
