Installation View, Bill Traylor: Works from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, David Zwirner, New York, 2024
Bill Traylor: Works from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation
David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Bill Traylor (c. 1853–1949) at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Marking Traylor’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, this presentation is organized in collaboration with The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and is composed of works from the Foundation collection. As part of the Foundation’s broader philanthropic mission, proceeds from the sales of works in the exhibition will benefit Harlem Children’s Zone.
Image: Bill Traylor, Man Wearing Maroon and Blue with Bottle, 1939-1942 (detail)
All Bill Traylor artwork is used with permission from Bill Traylor Family, Inc.
Born enslaved, Traylor spent much of his life after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation working as a farm laborer in rural Alabama and, later, as a shoemaker and factory worker in Montgomery. In 1939, at the age of approximately eighty-five, having never previously trained or studied art in any formal way, Traylor began making drawings and works on paper using gouache and other media. Though he continued to make art for the remainder of his life, Traylor was most prolific between 1939 and 1942, creating a body of work that offers a unique and rich registry of his life, experience, and insights.
Bill Traylor, Photograph by Horace Perry, Courtesy Alabama State Council on the Arts
“One day Traylor picked up a stub of pencil and a scrap of cardboard and began to draw.… He produced hundreds of drawings and paintings that rank among the greatest works of the twentieth century.”
—Roberta Smith, The New York Times
The works on view in this exhibition will loosely focus on three general themes that are central to the self-taught American artist’s oeuvre: animals, figures, and dynamic narrative scenes, which have become classified within Traylor’s body of work as “exciting events.” Rendered in pencil and black charcoal as well as in poster paints that range in color from burnt sienna reds to rich lapis blues, Traylor’s distinctive imagery mixes subjects and iconography from the American South with a strong formalist treatment of color, shape, and surface.
Bill Traylor, Blue Dog, 1939-1942 (detail)
“Bill Traylor produced a body of work which is as American and as important to America’s artistic contribution as are the scrupulously exquisite watercolors of Winslow Homer or the structured paint drippings of Jackson Pollock.”
—William Louis-Dreyfus
These compositions abstract and distill the world as Traylor experienced it into evocative displays of daily life that are at times filled with joy and exuberance and at others with tension and terror—visually enlivening an era defined by Jim Crow laws and post-Reconstruction racial violence and inequality.
Bill Traylor, Man Wearing Maroon and Blue with Bottle, 1939-1942 (detail)
“Bill Traylor’s brilliant but meteoric artistic moment is unprecedented.… The real adventure of finding meaning in Bill Traylor’s art is ours alone.”
—Kerry James Marshall
During the last decade of his life, Traylor’s art was featured in a handful of exhibitions in Montgomery and other locations, but it was not until the late 1970s that he began to achieve widespread recognition.
Today, Traylor’s works are included in the collections of many notable museums and public institutions including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Menil Collection, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
Installation View, Bill Traylor: Works from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, David Zwirner, New York, 2024
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