Bill Traylor

Bio

William "Bill" Traylor (April 1, c. 1853 – October 23, 1949) was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. Born into slavery, Traylor spent the majority of his life after emancipation as a sharecropper. It was only after 1939, following his move to Montgomery, Alabama that Traylor began to draw. At the age of 85, he took up a pencil and a scrap of cardboard to document his recollections and observations. From 1939 to 1942, while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, Traylor produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art.

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SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2023

Death of an Outsider, SHRINE, Los Angeles, CA

2018-19

Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

2013

Traylor in Motion: Wonders from New York Collections, American Museum of Folk Art, New York, NY

Bill Traylor: Drawings From the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, American Museum of Folk Art, New York, NY

2005

Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse, Studio Museum, New York, NY

1996

A Century of American Drawing from the Collection, MoMA, New York, NY

1995

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

1982

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

1979-1980

Bill Traylor 1854-1974, Works on Paper, R.H. Oosterom, Inc., New York, NY

 

Untitled (wild event), 1939, tempera and graphite on cardboard, 13.5 x 7.5 in.


Untitled (woman with purple shirt), 1939, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 15.5 x 9.5 in


Untitled, 1939, graphite and tempera on cardboard, 13 x 10.5 in.


Untitled, ca 1939-1942, colored pencil and graphite on cardboard, 10.75 x 7.25


Untitled, ca 1939-1942, poster paint and pencil on cardboard, 13 x 15 inches