It is signed in his typical backward S style. Mose Ts paintings are in many museum collections, including those of the American Folk Art Museum in New York, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. The New Orleans Museum of Art and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. His former employer encouraged him to start painting, and Tolliver began to create images with house paint on pieces of plywood, Masonite, or old furniture. Unable to stand without crutches, he sat on his bed to paint, placing the board on his knees. Then in the 1980s Mose had a solo show at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and was included in a folk art exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, in Washington, D. Where he met with Nancy Reagan. His work is in the Collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and numerous other public and private collections. He lived in poverty, but Mose also had a very fascinating life, including spending time painting at the White House at the request of the Reagans. During the late 1960’s, boredom and long hours of idle time spawned his creativity. Mose works with “pure house paint” on plywood; creating whimsical, haunting and sometimes erotic pictures of wonderfully balanced animals, humans, and flora. A “Quail Bird” may glide over a cotton field, or a spread-leg “Diana” may be straddled over An Excercise Rack Bicycle. Self portraits with crutches are a repeated image. Mose was dyslexic, which may have encouraged his artisitic efforts by limiting his reading and writing abilities. He would often turn his paintings upside-down and paint the picture of perhaps an animal and landscape positioned from various directions. Tolliver’s titles exhibit a fantastic imagination; “Smoke Charlies, ” “Scopper Bugs, “or Jick Jack Suzy Satisfying her own Self. Tolliver’s work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia College of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, and the Cocoran Gallery of Art. In 1993, a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. Mose Tolliver died on October 30, 2006 at a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, from pneumonia. The item “Folk Art Mose Tolliver Folk Art Watermelon Painting” is in sale since Sunday, March 17, 2019. This item is in the category “Art\Folk Art & Indigenous Art”. The seller is “fausto181818″ and is located in New York, New York. This item can be shipped to United States.
- Size: Medium (up to 36in.)
- Region of Origin: Alabama
- Artist: Mose Tolliver
- Material: Wood
- Date of Creation: 1970-1989
- Year: 1985-1990
- Features: Signed
- Width (Inches): 15.5″
- Color: White red green black
- Subject: fruit
- Originality: Original
- Height (Inches): 9.5″
