Grandma Moses: Visions of America
November 15, 2014 – March 1, 2015
Co-Curated by Galerie St. Etienne, New York
After nearly 12 years, Grandma Moses visited HMA during the holiday season! In this presentation, the museum organized a one-gallery exhibition of 31 original paintings by this legendary American artist. These works were borrowed from institutions across the country, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, and the Eisenhower Library…to name a few…and the Galerie St. Etienne in New York City.
One of the most popular artists in the U.S. during the 1940s and 1950s, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860-1961) is known as a “folk” or “naïve” artist; she never received formal art training. She was also the first and most well-known “memory” painter, who often used memory to give life to her landscapes. Grandma Moses also adapted scenes from greeting cards, magazines and prints such as Currier and Ives.
An elderly farmer and home-maker from upstate New York, Grandma Moses first came to public attention in 1940, at the age of 80. However, as interest declined for dozens of other artists discovered at about that time, Moses went on to ever wider renown- featured on the covers of Time and Life magazines, in the then-infant medium of television, in film, in bestselling books, and on millions of greeting cards.
Moses remained unaffected by all of the attention. When she died on December 13, 1961, at the age of 101, she had been a regular news feature for more than two decades and had completed more than 1,600 works of art.
