THORNTON DIAL (1928 - ) Untitled (Woman and Fish).
Watercolor and pencil on heavy wove paper, circa 1990. 762x578 mm; 30x22 3/4 inches. Initialed in charcoal upper right, in pencil lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Thornton Dial was born in 1928 in Emelle, AL, where he was raised by his great-grandmother. He moved to Bessemer, AL, and became a metalworker at a local Pullman-Standard boxcar factory until its closing in 1981. Not completing school beyond the third grade, Dial is a self-taught artist, known for utilizing welded metal scraps and other found objects in his assemblages. Both his assemblages and his works on paper are often imbued with a political framework, yet are viewed as having an "outsider" perspective.
In the late 1980s, Dial was able to focus on his art full time with a monthly stipend from Atlanta art patron William Arnett. Dial's career quickly blossomed, as by 1993, he had two concurrent solo exhibitions in New York City--one at the Museum of American Folk Art, the other at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has also been included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in 2005. His first career retrospective, Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial, was recently exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and will continue to New Orleans, Atlanta and Charlotte, NC.
