Anna (Grandma) Moses. b Greenwich, NY (USA), 1860; d Hoosick Falls, NY (USA), 1961.
Checkered House, 1943.
Oil on canvas
h91.4 x w 114.c cm; h36 x 45 in.
Horses and carriages travel up and down a street in a New England village. In the background, the rolling hills fade into the blue sky. The buildings, people and animals appear to be flat, though a convincing sense of space has been achieved by reducing the scale and tone of the houses and haystacks in the background. 'Grandma' Moses did not begin painting until she was in her seventies. Completely untutored, she was 'discovered' by a New York collector in 1938 and by the mid-1940s her paintings had become so popular that they were being used for Christmas cards. A 'naive' or 'primitive' artist, she made paintings which have a highly decorative quality because of the lack of realistic perspective. Painting from memory, she recorded the life of her native New England as it had been in the late nineteenth century. The childlike innocence and clarity which suffuse her paintings made them popular both to art-world sophisticates in search of an authentic vision and to a wide range of art-lovers.
From the 20th Century Art Book 2001 Phaidon Press Limited
this postcard is unused
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