Clementine Hunter: Painting Black Life from Memory
Clementine Hunter taught herself to paint in her fifities and spent the rest of her life chronicling the Black Southern experience, not with slogans...
Wen Gu 19 June 2026
#Self-Taught Artists
13 Black Folk Artists from the American South
The thirteen self-taught artists below, from Bill Traylor to Nellie Mae Rowe, Thornton Dial to Mary T. Smith, among others, created some of the most...
Adam Oestreich 19 June 2026
Marian Henel—Tapestries and Madness
Marian Henel’s tapestries are huge. The largest one measures over 6 m in length and 3 m in width (19 ft. 8 in. by 9 ft. 10 in.). Created in the...
Zuzanna Stańska 22 May 2026
American Folk Art Museum Staff Picks
With the collection spanning more than 7,000 artworks, the American Folk Art Museum, located in Manhattan, New York, celebrates some of the most...
Szymon Jocek 21 May 2026
Anna Coleman Ladd: The Sculptor Who Healed the Faces of War
When World War I left thousands of soldiers with faces they could no longer recognize, one sculptor decided to help them face the world again. Anna...
Wen Gu 28 April 2026
It’s Never Too Late: The Story of Grandma Moses
For most of her life, Grandma Moses was a wife, a mother, and a hardworking woman living on a farm. She began painting in her late seventies to keep...
Kinga Dobosz 30 March 2026
Anna Boberg—Self-Taught Painter of Lofoten Landscapes
Anna Boberg was a multidisciplinary self-taught artist active in Stockholm and Paris. She is best known for her arctic landscapes from Lofoten in...
Europeana 11 March 2026
Jacqueline Marval: The Female Fauvist You’ve Never Heard Of
She was known as one of the greatest painters of her day and was a central figure of the Parisian art scene at the turn of the 20th century. She...
Natalia Iacobelli 18 February 2026
10 Famous Artists You Wouldn’t Think Were Self-Taught
Think art school is the only path to greatness? Think again. These 10 artists defied convention through persistence, originality, and vision, without...
Wen Gu 22 January 2026
Suzanne Valadon and Her Self-Portraits
Suzanne Valadon, the French artist of the 19th century, was an absolute master of self-portraits. She fashioned her own look in so many different...
Aniela Rybak-Vaganay 21 January 2026
The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau was a French artist who painted in a Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), which was a...
Zuzanna Stańska 12 January 2026
Let’s Ride a Tiger! Escape into the Tropics with Henri Rousseau
Let’s ride a tiger! Definitely not! We should never try to ride a tiger, and Henri Rousseau does not suggest it either! It would be horrible...
Sarah Mills 12 January 2026
