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Lot Essay
According to the consignor, this was purchased at an American Folk Art Museum Fundraiser Auction in the early 1990's.
The large scale mixed media collage Tiger is a theme revisited by Thornton Dial (b. 1928). The tiger is a self-reflective figure loosely based on Thornton Dial's own life and the challenges facing black men in the South. The present work is a scattered assemblage of red, white, and blue on a black background. After careful reflection an abstracted figure constructed of found metal objects emerges from the chaos suggesting struggle or turmoil in a challenging life.
Born in 1928 in Emelle, Alabama to a thirteen year old single mother, Thornton Dial left school at the age of nine to start working odd jobs at an ice house and as a farm laborer. A peripatetic early childhood ended when Dial and his half-brother Arthur moved to Bessemer, Alabama, to live with his great-aunt, Sarah Dial Lockett. Dial worked hard his entire life often holding down multiple jobs as a pipe fitter, a farm hand, a welder and a carpenter; at the same time he maintained two full time jobs at the Bessemer Water Works and a thirty-three year career at the Pullman Standard, constructing train cars. Throughout his life he was constantly making things, often compiling found objects, welding or constructing cast offs. Oftentimes, Dial would bury or recycle his artwork after it was complete. Robert Hobbs suggests he did this "because of a lack of encouragement from his neighbors or because of fears of reprisals from the white community if his implicit critiques of social wrongs were discerned" (An American Anthology: Self-Taught Artist's of the 20th Century (San Francisco, California, 1998), pp. 174-175). Dial's artwork was discovered in the 1980's by an Atlanta art collector and benefactor, William S. Arnett, who offered Dial a stipend to create artwork full time after his retirement. For more information on the artist, see Thornton Dial, Image of the Tiger (New York, 1993) and Paige Williams, "Onward and Upward with the Arts: Composition in Black and White, A Collector's Fight to Get an Untrained Artist into the Canon", The New Yorker (August 2013), pp. 62-71.
The large scale mixed media collage Tiger is a theme revisited by Thornton Dial (b. 1928). The tiger is a self-reflective figure loosely based on Thornton Dial's own life and the challenges facing black men in the South. The present work is a scattered assemblage of red, white, and blue on a black background. After careful reflection an abstracted figure constructed of found metal objects emerges from the chaos suggesting struggle or turmoil in a challenging life.
Born in 1928 in Emelle, Alabama to a thirteen year old single mother, Thornton Dial left school at the age of nine to start working odd jobs at an ice house and as a farm laborer. A peripatetic early childhood ended when Dial and his half-brother Arthur moved to Bessemer, Alabama, to live with his great-aunt, Sarah Dial Lockett. Dial worked hard his entire life often holding down multiple jobs as a pipe fitter, a farm hand, a welder and a carpenter; at the same time he maintained two full time jobs at the Bessemer Water Works and a thirty-three year career at the Pullman Standard, constructing train cars. Throughout his life he was constantly making things, often compiling found objects, welding or constructing cast offs. Oftentimes, Dial would bury or recycle his artwork after it was complete. Robert Hobbs suggests he did this "because of a lack of encouragement from his neighbors or because of fears of reprisals from the white community if his implicit critiques of social wrongs were discerned" (An American Anthology: Self-Taught Artist's of the 20th Century (San Francisco, California, 1998), pp. 174-175). Dial's artwork was discovered in the 1980's by an Atlanta art collector and benefactor, William S. Arnett, who offered Dial a stipend to create artwork full time after his retirement. For more information on the artist, see Thornton Dial, Image of the Tiger (New York, 1993) and Paige Williams, "Onward and Upward with the Arts: Composition in Black and White, A Collector's Fight to Get an Untrained Artist into the Canon", The New Yorker (August 2013), pp. 62-71.