Person Record
Images
Metadata
Name |
Moses, Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) |
Other Names |
Grandma Moses Anna Mary Robertson |
Date Born |
09/07/1860 |
Birthplace |
Greenwich, New York |
Deceased |
12/13/1961 |
Place of Death |
Hoosick Falls, New York |
Father |
Robertson, Russell King |
Mother |
Robertson, Margaret Shanahan |
Spouse |
Moses, Thomas Salmon |
Children |
Fischer, Winona Robertson Moses Moses, Forrest King Moses, Loyd Moses, Anna Moses, Hugh |
Places of Residence |
Greenwich, New York Virginia Eagle Bridge, New York Bennington, Vermont |
Occupation |
Homemaker, Artist |
Notes |
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, "Grandma" Moses as she came to be lovingly known, was arguably the most famous artist in America From the mid-1940s until her death in 1961. Her reverent visions of a rural, agrarian past represented the promised land to millions of Americans and Europeans coping with the horrors of World War II and reeling from an onslaught of technological "progress." However, to understand Moses' art as quaint, nostalgic pictures of a longed-for past, and nothing more, is to miss a large part of their meaning and their power. Moses was born September 7, 1860, the daughter of farmers in Greenwich, New York. Marrying Thomas Salmon Moses in 1887, she lived and worked for the majority of her 101 years on a farm in Eagle Bridge, New York, amongst the idyllic rolling hills of Washington County, near the Vermont border-about 10 miles, as the crow flies, from Bennington. Artistically inclined from a young age, she was encouraged by her father, Russell King Robertson, who dabbled in picture making himself. However, life on the farm was hard work and art was seen by many, Anna Mary included, as a frivolous pursuit. It wasn't until she was no longer able to keep up with the physically demanding work of a farm wife that Moses started making pictures in earnest, when she was well into her 70s. In 1938, Moses' paintings were "discovered" by Louis J. Caldor, a discerning New York City art collector, in the window of W. D. Thomas Pharmacy in Hoosick Falls, New York, where they were displayed in a woman's exchange. That same year Alfred Barr, the founding Director of the Museum of Modern Art, declared that Modern art was comprised of three distinct but equal "movements": Cubism/Abstraction, Surrealism/Dada, and "Popular" or self-taught art. During the 1930s self-taught artists were being lauded by the mainstream art world, in search of a sense of "authenticity," for their intuitive picture making skills. Moses did not paint the world as it looked to her eye, but as it seemed, filtered through memory, perception, and emotion--the goal of most Modern artists. It was within this context that Moses first gained entry into the New York art scene. After three of her paintings were included in a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, Moses' first solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted," was organized by Otto Kallir at his Galerie St. Etienne in 1940. Within a few years Moses had become a household name and her art was instantly recognizable to millions of Americans. Though disarmingly down-to-earth, Moses was a visually sophisticated and highly inventive image maker. Her paintings, built on a foundation of memory, have become iconic images in America's collective consciousness, serving as a paradigm for coming to terms with a conflicted present and building a better future. |
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