San Diego Museum of Art
photo: John Hazeltine
Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
619-232-7931
Grandma Moses in the 21st Century
June 30 - August 26, 2001
On June 30, 2001,
a major retrospective exhibition of paintings by one of the most popular
artists in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s, Anna Mary Robertson
(Grandma Moses), opens at the San Diego Museum of Art. 
This large selection of her most important paintings
charts the evolution of her style, providing visitors with the opportunity
to reexamine her art, both on its own merits and in the context of modern
art history. (left: Rainbow, 1961, Private collection, Courtesy
Galerie St. Etienne, New York, © 2001, Grandma Moses Properties, New
York)
"Grandma Moses is one the great icons among 20th century folk artists, and it is with great pleasure that the San Diego Museum of Art now makes her lively paintings available and accessible to our community," says the Museum's executive director, Don Bacigalupi. "As we begin the 21st century, this is an ideal opportunity to reevaluate both the career and art of Grandma Moses, a personality with whom so many Americans can identify."
The Exhibition
This
exhibition breaks new scholarly ground in reexamining Moses' most important
paintings from a contemporary viewpoint, while charting her stylistic development.
In order to provide a deeper understanding of Moses' art, several key issues
are addressed. For instance, the exhibition looks at the degrees to which
Moses relied on both memory and personal observation in rendering her subjects.
Also considered is the relationship of Moses' work to the tradition of American
folk art as it existed in the early years of the 20th century, as well as
to the contemporaneous Regionalist movement. In addition, the exhibition
explores whether her extreme popularity affected her status as a "serious"
artist and our view of her legitimacy as a folk artist. Whether her gender
played a role in her popularity while possibly hindering her acceptance
by the art-world elite is also addressed. (left: Sugaring Off,
1943, Private collection, Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York, ©
2001, Grandma Moses Properties, New York)
The works in the exhibition were selected by guest curator
Jane Kallir, co-director of the Galerie St. Etienne. Kallir is recognized
internationally as the foremost authority on the artist, and it was her
grandfather, Otto Kallir, who was key 
in Moses' "discovery" and subsequent popular
success from 1940 on. Kallir has organized the works into five principal
groupings, book-ended by sections devoted respectively to Moses' "Early
Work" and "Late Work and Old-Age Style. " The first section
explores the painter's initial artistic evolution, from relatively conventional
beginnings copying popular prints, to the invention of her own unique style.
The three central portions of the presentation - entitled "Work and
Happiness," "Place and Nature," and "Play and Celebration"
- examine the artist's most important recurring themes: profound respect
for the American work ethic, sensitivity to local lore, the changing seasons
and local weather, and a love of fun and festivity.
(left: The Old Checkered House, 1944, Seiji Togo Memorial,
Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art, Tokyo, © 2001, Grandma Moses Properties,
New York)
Although Moses only began painting at an advanced age, her exceptional longevity resulted in a career of more than twenty years, and the final section of the show charts her continuing development over time. The exhibition concludes with her last finished painting, Rainbow, a joyous celebration of life done when the artist was over 100 years of age.
The Artist
An
elderly farmer and homemaker from upstate New York, Grandma Moses first
came to public attention in 1940, at the age of 80, as part of a general
burst of appreciation for self-taught art. However, as interest declined
for dozens of other artists who were discovered more or less simultaneously,
Moses went on to even wider renown. She was featured on the covers of TIME
and LIFE magazines, in the then-infant medium of television, in film,
in best-selling books, and on millions of greeting cards. Like Norman Rockwell,
her friend and colleague, Grandma Moses occupies an anomalous position at
the nexus of folk art, "high art," and popular culture. (left:
Joy Ride, 1953, Private collection, Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne,
New York, © 2001, Grandma Moses Properties, New York)
Anna Mary Robertson was born on September 7, 1860, on a farm in upstate New York, one of a family of ten children. At the age of twenty-seven, she married a "hired man, " Thomas Salmon Moses, and the couple established themselves on a farm in Virginia. The Moses family spent nearly two decades in Virginia, during which time Anna Mary gave birth to ten children, five of whom died in infancy. In 1905, the couple returned to New York and settled in Eagle Bridge, not far from Anna Mary's birthplace. Here, her children grew to adulthood and, in 1927, her husband Thomas died.
Often, during her younger days as a wife and mother, Anna Mary decorated elements of her home using house paint, such as a fireboard. Many of her other early creations were executed in embroidery, which were much admired by friends and relatives. However, when arthritis made it too painful for Moses' to wield a needle, her sister suggested that it might be easier to paint. It was this pivotal suggestion that spurred Grandma Moses' painting career in her late seventies.
Grandma
Moses is usually characterized as a "folk" or "naïve"
artist, terms reserved for those who have never received formal training
in art (later termed "outsider art"). She first gained broader
recognition when an amateur art collector, Louis J. Caldor, saw her works
in a Hoosick Falls, NY, drugstore window. He not only purchased all of the
works on display but, in 1939, convinced the Museum of Modern Art to include
Moses in a members-only show of contemporary folk painting. The following
year, Caldor met independent gallery owner Otto Kallir, who agreed to mount
a one-woman exhibition at his Galerie St. Etienne. Moses' first show, What
a Farmwife Painted, opened on October 9, 1940, to favorable reviews.
(left: Black Horses, 1942, Private collection, Courtesy Galerie
St. Etienne, New York, © 2001, Grandma Moses Properties, New York)
Charmed
equally by her down-home personality, her biography and her paintings, the
postwar mass media became transfixed by the artist, and she eventually developed
an enormous international following. Yet Moses remained unaffected by all
the attention and ever true to her simple rural origins. When Grandma Moses
died on December 13, 1961, at the age of 101, she had been a regular news
feature for more than two decades. She had completed over 1600 works of
art. (left: Out for Christmas Trees, 1946, Private collection,
Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York, © 2001, Grandma Moses Properties,
New York)
Other Museums on National Tour
See our earlier article, Grandma Moses in the 21st Century (3/7/01), which relates to a national tour exhibition at the Orlando Museum of Art.
rev. 4/26/01
Read more about the San Diego Museum of Art in Resource Library Magazine.
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line to see enlargements.
For further biographical information please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 5/23/11
Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2011 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.