Bio

William "Bill" Traylor (April 1, c. 1853 – October 23, 1949) was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. Born into slavery, Traylor spent the majority of his life after emancipation as a sharecropper. It was only after 1939, following his move to Montgomery, Alabama that Traylor began to draw. At the age of 85, he took up a pencil and a scrap of cardboard to document his recollections and observations. From 1939 to 1942, while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, Traylor produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art.

Exhibition History

Selected Exhibitions

2018-19

Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; travelle

2013

Traylor in Motion: Wonders from New York Collections, American Museum of Folk Art, NYC

2013

Bill Traylor: Drawings From the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, American Museum of Folk Art, NYC

2005

Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse, Studio Museum, NYC

1996

A Century of American Drawing from the Collection, MoMA, NYC

1995

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

1982

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

1979-1980

Bill Traylor 1854-1974, Works on Paper, R.H. Oosterom, Inc., NYC