William Edmondson (1870-1951)

Birdbath Sculpture w. female figures front and verso, c. 1940

Nashville, Tennessee

Media:  Carved Tennessee Limestone

Dimensions:  32 x 27 x 13 inches

verso:

William Edmondson, the child of freed slaves, is among the most acclaimed of sculptors in America.  Like so many Black men of his times, he started adulthood as a menial laborer, yet he became the first Black artist to be given a one person exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.  His classic works are timeless, simple yet sophisticated, beautiful and intuitively Brancusi-like.  Most of his work now resides in the major museums of this country.  Whatever the artist touched, his fundamental religious beliefs, his simple straightforward style, and his inner visions were added to the stone.

Exhibition History:

William Edmondson: Tennessee State Museum Retrospective, 1981-Nashville, TN Illustrated p. 87, in exhibition catalog.

Cheekwood Museum of Art, 1999, Nashville, TN, Illustrated in The Art of William Edmondson, catalogue number, 55, p200.     (Excerpt from entry- Birdbaths remain Edmondson's most technically demanding and visually complex works of art. Seen in this, possibly Edmondson's best birdbath, is the stunning bows that surround the caryatid.)

Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY

Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

The Mennello Museum of American Folk Art, Orlando, FL, 2000-01

A native of Nashville and the son of former slaves, William Edmondson was the first African-American artist to be featured in a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art (1937).

For this exhibition MoMA director Alfred Barr remarked, "Usually the naïve artist works in the easier medium of painting. Edmondson, however, has chosen to work in limestone, which he attacks with extraordinary courage and directness, to carve out simple, emphatic forms." Robert Bishop, the late director of the Museum of American Folk Art, declared Edmondson to be "one of the outstanding folk carvers--if not the outstanding one--of the twentieth century."

Edmondson's first works were memorial gravestones. Later he created animal, human, and celestial figures. His carvings were inspired by his faith, community, and culture. He told the story of how God spoke to him. "I was out in the driveway with some old pieces of stone when I heard a voice telling me to pick up my tools and start to work on a tombstone. I looked up in the sky and right there in the noon daylight He hung a tombstone out for me to make."

Showcasing Edmondson's sculpture and placing it in the mainstream of American art for the first time, the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville organized a traveling exhibition to four other museum venues of about 40 pieces of his work in 2000-2001.

 

Special Periodical References are:

"The New York Times" (long feature story with photos), Sunday May 14, 2000 in Art/Architecture section. http://www.nytimes.com/2000

"Folk Art Magazine" (feature story and front cover), Spring 2000.

http://folkartmuseum.org/magazine

Altered Views in the House of Modernism, Roberta Smith, New York Times, April 29, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005