Horace Pippin: The Complete Story
Horace Pippin, 1888 to 1946, was a self taught African American painter and World War One veteran. A sniper's bullet crippled his right arm, so he painted by guiding his right hand with his left, and became one of America's most admired self taught artists.
He had no training and a wounded body. He still made some of the most honest American paintings of his century.
The soldier who taught himself to paint
Pippin grew up poor in Pennsylvania and worked odd jobs. In 1917 he joined the 369th Infantry Regiment, the Black unit known as the Harlem Hellfighters.
In France a sniper hit him in the right shoulder. He came home with an arm he could barely lift.
Painting became his recovery. The war he had survived became his first great subject.
Painting with a wounded hand
To work, Pippin rested his weak right hand on the panel and pushed it with his left. Every line cost effort.
He began by burning images into wood with a hot poker, then moved to oils. His first major canvas, The End of the War: Starting Home, took him about three years.
The slowness shows as care, not weakness. He built each scene flat, clear and deliberate.
Discovered at forty nine
For years Pippin painted in West Chester with no audience. In 1937 the illustrator N C Wyeth and the critic Christian Brinton saw his work in a local shop window.
Within a year his paintings hung at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1938 show Masters of Popular Painting. Recognition came fast and late.
The collectors who lifted him
The Philadelphia dealer Robert Carlen gave him a solo show in 1940. The famous collector Albert Barnes invited him to study at the Barnes Foundation, though Pippin soon left, wary of being taught out of his own voice.
In New York, the dealer Edith Halpert took him on at her Downtown Gallery. Within a few years a poor veteran had become a name the art world fought to show.
More than a primitive
Critics filed Pippin under naive or primitive art. The label flattens him.
His John Brown series faces American slavery head on. Mr Prejudice, from 1943, shows a divided nation and the racism Black soldiers met even in wartime work.
This is history painting with a clear point of view, closer in spirit to social realism than to folk decoration.
Three works that define him
First, The End of the War: Starting Home, his slow first masterpiece, where soldiers crawl home through smoke.
Second, John Brown Going to His Hanging, in which a Black woman at the front turns to face the viewer, the only witness who meets our eyes.
Third, Mr Prejudice of 1943, a blunt diagram of a country split by race even as it fought a war abroad.
Where his paintings hang
The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds key Pippin paintings. The Smithsonian American Art Museum shows more of his work in Washington.
Horace Pippin, questions people ask
Who was Horace Pippin? A self taught African American painter and World War One veteran, born in 1888.
What media did he use? Burnt wood panels at first, then oil paint on canvas.
What is he most known for? War scenes, the John Brown series, and Mr Prejudice on American racism.
Why is he called a primitive painter? Because he was self taught, though his work is deliberate and pointed.
When did he die? In 1946, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, aged 58.
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