Untitled (Two Figures, Female Figure Pointing)

Bill TraylorWW-1939-142675

1939·Graphite and opaque watercolor on brown cardboard·38.2 × 33.3 cm (15 1/16 × 13 1/8 in.)

Catalogue

Year: 1939
Medium: Graphite and opaque watercolor on brown cardboard
Dimensions: 38.2 × 33.3 cm (15 1/16 × 13 1/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Bill Traylor

Artist

Bill Traylor

Painting

Born into slavery, Bill Traylor spent most of his life as a sharecropper. At the age of 85, rheumatic and homeless on the streets of Montgomery, he began recording his personal struggles and observations with a distinctive visual lexicon of pictographic silhouettes. The 1,500 pieces he produced before his death at the age of 96 comprise an expressive chronicle of life in the Jim Crow south and an oeuvre of transcendent aesthetic allure.

Montgomery, AL, USA

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