Grandma Moses: in the 21st Century

Grandma Moses and her paintings first came to public attention in 1940, when she was 80 years old. Her folk art, down-home personality, and background as a farmer and homemaker charmed the American public. By the time she died at the age of 101, she had completed over 1600 works of art and had established an international reputation. The work of “the white-haired girl,” a self-taught artist who was a regular news feature for two decades, remained enormously popular at home and abroad even in the years after her death. For this reevaluation of the work of Grandma Moses, Jane Kallir contributes an authoritative introduction and presents a catalogue that illustrates 87 of Moses’ most important works. Kallir traces Moses’ development as an artist from the first embroidered landscapes to the glorious paintings of her “old-age style.” The Grandma Moses myth is tackled from various perspectives. Roger Cardinal examines the artist’s working methods, exploring the relationship between the actual regional landscape and her interpretation of the area. Michael D. Hall places Moses within the context of contemporary artistic and social movements of the 1940s and 1950s. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan reveals how memory and imagination merge in the paintings. And Judith E. Stein discusses the role of gender in shaping the artist’s reputation in the postwar years.