Born: 1888
Died: 1946
Gender: Male
Nationality: American
Horace Pippin was born at West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised in
Goshen, New York. He left school at 15 and took on a series of dead-end
jobs before enlisting in the US Army in 1917. He sustained a serious
injury to his arm while serving in France and it wasn't until 1930 when
he was able to use his arm properly in order to paint.
He drew largely from his combat
experience as inspiration for his paintings and often worked with
religious themes. His work was first exhibited in 1938 at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. The show was entitled 'Masters of Popular
Painting: Modern Primitives of Europe and America' and featured many
examples of so-called naive art. Pippin's paintings stood out as being
some of the most heart-felt in the exhibition, featuring highly dramatic
combat scenes infused with the intense emotions he had experienced first
hand. |