Horace Pippin

1888-1946 · West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA

A Harlem Hellfighter came home from the trenches with a shattered right arm, taught it to paint by guiding it with his left hand, and became one of America’s great painters.

The life

Pippin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1888 and drew from childhood. He served in France with the 369th Infantry, the Harlem Hellfighters, and in September 1918 a sniper’s bullet split his shoulder blade and took the use of his right arm. Back home he willed the arm back into service, first burning images into wood panels with a hot poker in the late 1920s, then taking up oils in 1930, supporting his right hand with his left as he worked. His national debut came in MoMA’s Masters of Popular Painting in 1938, and he painted about 140 works before his death in 1946.

The work

Oil paintings of war memory, scripture and Black American life: the Holy Mountain series, John Brown Going to His Hanging, domino games and family interiors, all built from strong flat shapes and deep, deliberate colour. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation and the Whitney Museum.

Why we love them

Every canvas was won twice, once against the subject and once against the wound. Nothing in the paintings is casual, and nothing is spare.

Go deeper

• Horace Pippin at the Outsider Art Fair
• Horace Pippin on Wikipedia
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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