Simon Sparrow
American painter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Simon Sparrow (October 16, 1914 – September 26, 2000) was an American folk artist, a painter and mixed media artist. He was born in Pennsylvania[1] or West Africa,[2] and grew up in North Carolina on a Cherokee Reservation. He was a self-taught artist and received a Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award (WVALAA) in 2012.[3] Sparrow's work is considered folk art and his piece Assemblage with Found Objects is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum on the 3rd Floor, Luce Foundation Center.[4]
Simon Sparrow | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 16, 1914 |
| Died | September 26, 2000 (aged 85) |
| Education | self-taught |
| Known for | Painting and mixed media |
| Awards | Wisconsin Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Award |
Simon Sparrow began creating art at age seven and also began his practice of informal and street preaching in his youth.[5] He moved to Philadelphia and enlisted in the army in 1942. He later moved to New York before settling in Madison, Wisconsin.[6] He died in a Madison nursing home in 2000.[7]
Sparrow is best known for his mixed media constructions and paintings, which he began creating once he moved to Madison, Wisconsin in the 1970s.[6] One of his pieces, "Simon Sparrow Outsider Art Picture, ca. 1980" was appraised on Antiques Roadshow in July 2009 for $6,000-8,000.[8] On 20 May 2012, Sparrow was posthumously awarded a WVALAA along with 13 other honorees.[9]
Exhibitions
Some exhibitions of note for Sparrow's work include:
- "Great and Mighty Things" - Philadelphia Museum of Art (2013)
Sponsored by Comcast Corporation and Duane Morris, this exhibition was organized around self-taught artists that worked in "remote or rural places with unconventional methods and with materials such as reclaimed wood, sheet metal, house paint, and stove soot."[6]
- "Off Center: Outsider Art in the Midwest" - Minnesota Museum of American Art (1996)
- "Visionaries, Outsiders and Spiritualists: American Self-Taught Artists" (1994)
Organized by Entourage: Exhibitions of Horsham, PA. this exhibit of 16 self-taught artists included some of Sparrow's "masklike heads (that) appear to radiate auras of energy, as if embodying a spiritual force."[10]
- "Structure and Surface: Beads in Contemporary American Art" - Renwick Gallery (1990)
Featuring some of Sparrow's "untitled collages (that) combine commercial beads, stick figures and found objects such as rocks, metallic chains, glitter and tinsel to portray religious imagery."[11]
- "37 Visionary Works of Outsider Art" - Princeton, Carnegie Center for Art & History (1987)
