"Horace-Pippin"(February 22,1888-Jul6,1946)

Was a swelf-taught African American painter.The injustice of  slavery and American segregation figure prominently in many of his works.
Horrace was born in West Chester,Pennsylvania,and grew up in Goshen,New York.There he attended segregated schools until he was 15,when he went to support his ailing mama.As a boy Horace responded to an art supply company's advertising contest and won his first set of crayons and a box of watercolors.As a child,he made drawings of racehorses and jockeys from Goshen's celebrated racetrack.Prior to 1917,Horace variously toiled in a coal yard,in an iron foundry,as a hotel porter and as a used-clothing peddler.Horace was a member of St. John's African Methodist Protestant Church.
He served in the 369th infantry,the famous Harlem Hellfighters,in Europe during World War 1,where he lost of his right arm after being shot by a sniper.He said of his combat experience.
"I did not care what or where I went.I aked God to help me,and I did so.And that is the way I came through that terrible and Hellish place.For the whole entire battlefield was hell,so it was no place for any human being to be.While in the trenches,Horace kept illustrated journals of his military service,of which six drawings survived.He initially took up art in in the 1920s to strengthen wounded right arm;his activity as a painter began in earnest around 1930,when he completed his first oil painting,The End of The War: Starting home.By the late 1930s,critic Christian Brinton,artist N.C.Wyeth and John Mcoy,collector Albert C.Barnes,dealer Robert Carlen and currators Dorothy Miller and Holger Cahill championed Horace's distinctive paintings that captured his childhood memories and war experiences,scenes of everyday life,landscapes,portraits,bibical subjects,and American historical events.Horace enrolled in art classes at the Barnes Foundation during autumn 1939 and spring 1940 semesters.
One of his best-known paintings,his Self-portrait of 1941,shows him seated in front of an easel,crading his brush in his right hand (he used his injured right arm when painting).His painting of John Brown Going to his hanging (1942) is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.Among his work there are many genere paintings,such as the Domino Players (1943),in the Philips Collection,Washington D.C.,and several versions of Cabin in the Cotton.His portraits include a depiction of the contralto Marian Anderson singing,painted in 1941.He also painted landscapes and religious subjects.
In the eight years between his national debut in the Museum of Modern's Art's traveling exhibition "Masters of Popular Paintings" (1938) and his death at the age of 58,Horace's recognition increased on the east and west coasts.During this period,he had three solo exhibitions (1940,1941,and 1943) at the Carlen Gallery,Philadelphia,Pennsylvania and solo exhibitions at the Arts Club of Chicago (1941),and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1942),while private collections and museums such as the Barnes Foundation,the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of Art,purchased his works.His paintings were featured in nationally surveys held at the Art Institute of Chicago,Chicago Illinois;Carnegie Institute,Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania;Corcoran Gallery of Art,Washington,D.C.;Dayton Art Institute,Ohio;Nationally Gallery of Art,Washington D.C.;Newark Museum,Newark,New Jersey;Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,Philadelphia,Pennsylvania.and Tate Gallery,London United Kingdom.In 1947,critic Alain Locke described him as "a real and rare genius,combining folk quality with artistic maturity so uniquely almost to defy classification."