Thornton Dial

Artist biography:

Born: 1928, Alabama

Dial is a self-taught artist who only began seriously making art after his retirement. He worked in and around Bessemer, Alabama, as a carpenter, bricklayer, welder, and steelworker, finally starting his own family business making painted steel furniture. With more time to make things simply for his own pleasure, Dial started constructing figurative sculptures, then branched out to painting and mixedmedia assemblages. Shortly after this, he began showing his work at galleries and museums, including The New Museum in New York and at the Whitney Biennial. His art combines African and American folk traditions to tell stories that are at once personal, political and spiritual.

Dial has had many important solo and group shows and is perhaps best known for his 2005 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. In February 2011, a Dial solo show opened at the Indianapolis Museum of Art entitled 'Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial' which also traveled to the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Mint Museum, and the High Museum of Art.

Thornton Dial is widely regarded as the most important artist ever to arise from the Deep South and is ranked among the most significant in the world today. With recent reviews of his solo show in Indianapolis in Time Magazine, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Dial is arguably one of the most important African-American artists of the 20th century.