Horace Pippin

1888 - 1946 • American • Painter • Folk art

"I began to think of things I had always loved to do. First I got together all the old cigar boxes that I could get and made fancy boxes out of them . ... In the winter of 1925 I made my first burnt wood panels ... this brought me back to my old self. " - Horace Pippin

Pippin had little formal education and no art training. His paintings use bright, flat colors and ignore PERSPECTIVE in favor of stylized forms that are reminiscent of both MOSES and WOOD. However, Pippin's subject was the life of African-Americans, both in history and in contemporary times. Shot in the shoulder during World War I, Pippin believed he would never be able to draw again, but as his comment quoted above describes, he made his way back to drawing by burning lines into a board with a poker that was heated on the kitchen stove. The method he devised was to hold the poker steady in his right arm, and create the image by moving the board with his left. He always had to support his wounded arm, but as it grew stronger he was able to paint at an easel. The End of the war: Starting Home (1931) is a small painting in which the hand-carved frame, decorated with grenades and other military . hardware, is part of the antiwar impact of the picture, especially distressing because of, rather than in spite of, the simplicity with which the exploding shells and expressionless, gesturing soldiers are portrayed. In contrast, Pippin also painted scenes (reminiscent of HICKs's Peaceable Kingdom series) where the grass in which the biblical lion and lamb lie down together is covered with wildflowers and the shepherd who tends them is a black man.