A long-overdue reexamination of beloved American artist Grandma Moses, restoring her rightful place within the canon of mid-century American Art.



One of the best-known artists of her time, and a true American legend, Anna Mary Robertson Grandma Moses (1860-1961) was often marginalized as a latter-day folk painter or a phenomenon of popular media. Accompanying a traveling exhibition, this new book looks closely at the paintings themselves and the artist's compelling biography to reassert her role in the development of a culture of modernist art at mid-century. Presenting fresh research, several scholars examine Moses's name, public persona, painted world, and wildly popular place in American pop culture; address the myth of the self-taught artist; and contextualize her work alongside such contemporaries as Horace Pippin, Elie Nadelman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Morris Hirshfield.