Grandma Moses (65438+September 7th, 0860-196165438+February 13), her real name is Anna Marie Robertson Moses. In her later years, she became one of the most famous and prolific primitive painters in America. Therefore, Grandma Moses is often regarded as a representative of self-taught and late bloomer.
Anna marie Robertson was born in Greenwich, new york, USA on September 7th, 1980. Her father Russell King Robertson is a farmer and also runs a flax factory. Mary's five brothers help her father look after the flax factory and farm, while she and her four sisters are learning to do housework.
/kloc-at the age of 0/2, anna marie began to work as a maid for a wealthy family on a nearby farm, helping the family with housework. In the next 15 years, she worked as a maid. Until the age of 27, she met Thomas Salmon Moses, a farm worker, and married him.
1887, Thomas heard that for Americans like him, the South during the reconstruction period was a place full of opportunities. So, a few hours after the wedding, the couple boarded the train to North Carolina. Thomas made an appointment to manage a ranch there before he left. However, when he and his bride passed through Staunton, Virginia, they stopped. There, they stayed overnight and were persuaded to rent a local farm. Mary Anne Moses soon fell in love with the beautiful Cherando Valley.
Life will never be that easy. Moses believed in her ability. She used her savings to buy a cow and supplemented her family by selling butter. Later, when things got bad, she made potato chips and sold them to supplement her family. She gave birth to ten children, but only five survived. Their family finally prospered, and they earned enough money to buy their own farm.
From then on, she was called "Mother Moses" by her neighbors.
Moses thought he would spend the rest of his life happily in Virginia, but Thomas was homesick. 1905, he persuaded his wife to return to the north. She and Thomas bought a farm in Eagle Bridge, not far from her birthplace, and named the farm "Mount Nibo"-the Bible predicted that Moses would disappear from this mountain. 1927, Thomas died of a heart attack on this farm.
Moses is not an idle man. Although her children have grown up, there are still many jobs on the farm. Later, she joked, "If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens." After thinking about it, she added, "Otherwise, I'll rent a room in the city and cook scones for dinner."
1932, Moses went to bennington, about 30 miles away from home, to take care of his daughter Anna who was suffering from tuberculosis. Anna showed her mother an embroidered picture and asked her to draw an identical one. So Moses started sewing what she called "the worst embroidery paintings" and gave them to anyone who would take them in.
Later, Moses complained that arthritis made it difficult for her to hold the needle, and her sister Kristija suggested that she use painting instead. Under various coincidences, Grandma Moses's painting career began.
Soon, Moses drew many paintings that she could never use up in her life. Along with the canned fruit and jam she made, Moses sent some paintings to the Cambridge rural exhibition. She recalled wryly: "My canned fruit and jam won the prize, but I didn't draw it." At this time, Moses' painting career may have ended because of failure. But she loves art very much. She is an idealized person-painting purely for art's sake. Slowly, it became a little hobby of hers.
From 1936 to 1937, Caroline, the owner of the drugstore in the neighboring town of Hushiforth, invited Moses to participate in a women's exchange activity organized by her. In those years, Moses' paintings have been placed by the window of the pharmacy, next to some handicrafts made by local housewives, which are covered with dust.
1938 Easter, new york collector Luis Caldo happened to pass by this town. Caldo is an engineer in the water department of new york. He often travels on business. He likes to look for works of art from all over the world, so the paintings by the window of the drugstore attracted him. He asked to see more works and finally bought them all. He also asked the painter's name and address, and planned to meet the painter himself.
When Caldo told Moses that he could make her famous, the whole Moses family thought Caldo was crazy. Indeed, in the next few years, everyone's views were proved to be correct. Caldo brought Moses' paintings to new york and exhibited them in museums and galleries. Although some people think these works are very good, they all lose interest when they hear that the painter is old. 1938, Grandma Moses is 78 years old. It seems that organizing an exhibition for her is not worth the effort and expense. Her life expectancy prevents most dealers from seeing any return on investment.
However, Caldo didn't give up, and he finally got something in 1939. Sidney Janis, a collector, chose three paintings of Moses for the private exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art. However, this exhibition is only open to the internal staff of the museum and has little impact.
During the period of 1940, Cardo turned his attention to the Saint Etienne Gallery newly established by Viennese immigrant Otto Carrier, which specially exhibited the works of modern Austrian masters such as gustav klimt, Oscar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. But Carrier, like many pioneers who advocated modernism in the crucial decade between the two world wars, was interested in the works of self-taught painters. In Europe, this trend was established when Picasso borrowed from Henry Rousseau, a "custom painter", and was further pushed to the artistic peak by the published works of the expressionist artist wassily kandinsky. In essence, these artists and their followers think that the works of self-taught artists are purer and more primitive than those of trained painters. In order to keep in line with predecessors' efforts to abandon academic tradition, the contemporary avant-garde always pays attention to those models who can't get formal training for various reasons.
1940+00 In June, Moses made his first public appearance in Saint Etienne Gallery. Otto Carrier named the exhibition "A peasant woman's painting", because people knew nothing about Moses, and using her name would not attract attention at all. Only a few months later, a reporter visiting Eagle Bridge came up with the well-known nickname "Grandma Moses".
Although the exhibition in Saint Etienne was widely publicized and the visitors were enthusiastic, the success was negligible after all. What really took Moses' career off was the "Thanksgiving Celebration" organized by Jim Bells Department Store shortly after the Saint Etienne exhibition. These large paintings were reassembled in Jim Bells, and Moses was invited to new york. Wearing a small black hat and a lace collar dress, accompanied by Caroline, Moses (perhaps remembering her experience in a rural exhibition) made a frank public speech on jam and preserves, which has always been a topic of great interest to journalists in new york, and the legend of Grandma Moses was born.
Almost unprecedented things happened, and Grandma Moses became a superstar. She didn't mean to, and didn't make any sudden changes, but she succeeded after all. Her speech at 1940 Jim Bells made her famous, and Moses soon became a local celebrity, but her reputation was limited to New York State at that time. She held exhibitions in many places in New York State and began to be surrounded by vacationers chasing art souvenirs.
"A person's life, can find what you like, is lucky. People who have their own real interests will lead an interesting life and become an interesting person. When you do something wholeheartedly regardless of utility, the joy and sense of accomplishment when you invest is the greatest gain and praise. "