Pippin, Horace

Impact on the world

A self-taught painter who began creating art seriously only after losing significant use of his right arm to a World War I sniper's bullet, Pippin became the first Black artist to be the subject of a full published monograph in 1947 and was eulogized by The New York Times as 'the most important Negro painter' in American history; his paintings, ranging from biblical scenes to unflinching depictions of slavery and racial segregation, drew on both his religious upbringing and his firsthand experience of the war's brutality.

Life & background

Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised partly in Goshen, New York, Pippin left segregated schooling at 15 to support his ailing mother, working a series of jobs in a coal yard, an iron foundry, and as a hotel porter before enlisting in 1917 in the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment, the celebrated 'Harlem Hellfighters,' who fought attached to French forces for the war's duration after the U.S. Army initially relegated Black troops to labor roles. Shot by a German sniper during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918, an injury he described in his own words as splitting his shoulder blade and wrecking his right arm's socket, Pippin lost significant function in his dominant arm and turned to painting years later partly as a means of processing the trauma, developing techniques to compensate for his injury. His unflinching paintings addressing slavery and segregation, alongside biblical and everyday scenes, brought him posthumous recognition as a major American artist, and in 1947, a year after his death, Selden Rodman's 'Horace Pippin, A Negro Painter in America' became the first published monograph devoted to a Black artist.

Sources

1. Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum