Mingei International Museum presents an exhibition of work by Bill Traylor on view Feb 9, 2013 – May 12, 2013.
Bill Traylor (1854?-1949) is one of the best-known and most highly esteemed artists from the American south. A self-taught artist from Montgomery, Alabama, Traylor’s depictions of life in rural and urban Alabama have made him one of the most acclaimed artists of the twentieth century. Beginning when he was in his early eighties, in a prolific decade of art making, Traylor produced more than 1200 drawings in graphite, colored pencil, poster paints and crayon. Many of his works were created on shirt cardboard, cast-off signs and other shaped supports, whose unusual forms often influenced his designs. Traylor used these materials to create geometrically based representations of human and animal figures, often combining them in complex compositions that included abstracted buildings or “constructions.” The exhibition will feature over 60 rarely seen drawings from the two largest public collections of his work, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. www.mingei.org