Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art has acquired 12 works of art by four artists donated by the estate of Maria and Conrad Janis, son of esteemed gallerist Sidney Janis. These works support our goal of expanding narratives of 20th- and 21st-century American art by identifying artistic traditions within the United States beyond those associated with canonical modernism. Included in the gift are three paintings by Morris Hirshfield, one painting by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses), two tapestries by Kiki Smith, and six prints by George Segal. The works by Hirshfield and Moses, two self-taught artists working in or from folk traditions, join others in our collection, including those by James Castle, Thornton Dial, William Edmondson, Horace Pippin, Nellie Mae Rowe, Henry Speller, and Joseph Yoakum. The works by Smith and Segal, two highly original, unclassifiable artists, show their creative range outside of sculpture, their principal medium.

“This generous gift pushes our collection in exciting new directions, in particular by enhancing our growing representation of self-taught artists,” said Harry Cooper, Bunny Mellon Curator of Modern Art. “We are indebted to the donors for thinking of the National Gallery, and also to Arne Glimcher of Pace Gallery, who helped direct the works here as executor of the estate.”

Morris Hirshfield (1872–1946)

Characteristic of his heavily patterned works that often depict women or animals, Tailor-Made Girl (1939), Girl in Blue (1941), and Cat and Kittens on the Grass (1941) recall Hirshfield’s previous career: he owned textile companies that manufactured clothing and shoes. Tailor-Made Girl and Girl in Blue are typical of his imaginary portraits, featuring a figure with an iconic stare and stiff frontal pose; precise detailing of foliage and fabric; mysterious narrative suggestions; built-up areas of the image; and a selective use of a yellow varnish to create secondary patterns. A classic example of Hirshfield’s other favorite subject—animals—the stylized Cat and Kittens on the Grass is at once charming and regal.

Teaching himself to paint in 1937, Hirshfield came to the attention of Sidney Janis, who included the artist in the 1939 exhibition Contemporary Unknown American Painters for the Museum of Modern Art’s “members’ room,” as well as in the book They Taught Themselves: American Primitive Painters of the 20th Century, published in 1942. That same year, Hirshfield participated in one of the first surrealist exhibitions in America, First Papers of Surrealism. The surrealists appreciated the eroticism of Hirshfield’s figures, and the critic Clement Greenberg referred to the painter as one of America’s best. One year later (in 1943) Hirshfield was the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses) (1860–1961)

An American self-taught artist who began painting in earnest at the age of 78, Moses is best known for scenes of rural life that conjure up a premodern era in terms of both subject and technique. Grandma Going to the Big City (1943) is an impressive example of her ability to capture narrative detail, character, clothing, and architecture with a meticulous technique and lively, dynamic sense of composition.

In 1938 Louis Caldor, a New York collector, noticed her paintings in a drugstore window in Hoosick Falls, NY, and started promoting her work. The following year Sidney Janis included three of her paintings in Contemporary Unknown American Painters, alongside Hirshfield’s work. During the 1950s, Moses gained popularity. Her autobiography, My Life’s History, was published in 1952 and she was featured on a 1953 cover of Time magazine. She was also the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary and several television programs. After her death, her work was exhibited in several large traveling exhibitions in the US and abroad, including at the National Gallery in 1979—Grandma Moses: Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), curated by Otto Kallir, the dealer who represented the artist’s estate.

Kiki Smith (b. 1954)

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Smith is an American artist whose unique style draws on mythology, folklore, fairytales, feminism, and religious iconography. Part of an ongoing series of thematically linked, dreamlike visions of the natural world, Fortune (2014) and Congregation (2014) were inspired by the large Apocalypse Tapestry—commissioned around 1373 by Louis I, Duke of Anjou, and depicting a narrative from the Book of Revelation. Associated with the four seasons, Smith’s tapestries bring this traditional medium into the present by calling attention to environmental degradation and species vulnerability. For Smith, the tapestry technique results in objects whose complex, tactile surfaces place them halfway between printmaking and sculpture. While rooted in the medieval era, they are simultaneously informed by the digital sophistication of the contemporary world.

In 2011 Smith began to work with Magnolia Editions, a California print studio, on a suite of editioned Jacquard tapestries. The process was a long, collaborative one. Each of Smith’s tapestry editions underwent several versions, with some taking several years to reach a final incarnation. For these works, Smith constructed enormous collages made from Nepalese paper, glitter, pencil, watercolor, and a variety of other materials, which were then photographed and printed at one-third the size for her to rework by hand. Each piece was converted into a tapestry by a complex, automated weaving process on a Jacquard loom. Despite the technological sophistication involved in producing the tapestries, their origin as multilayered collages remains evident in the finished work.

George Segal (1924–2000)

Best known for white life-size plaster casts of single figures and groupings, Segal was also a painter and printmaker. Associated with the pop art movement, Segal’s work relies on both the figure and the commonplace object to capture a specific emotion, memory, or moment in time. Segal was represented exclusively by Sidney Janis from 1965 to 1999. With this gift, the National Gallery acquires three lithographs from Segal’s Partial Nude on White series (1978), depicting fragmented parts of the human figure or scenes from daily life, and three screenprints portraying the female figure. In the screenprints Red-Haired Girl with Green Robe (1986) and Yellow Nude Reclining (1987), the vibrant palette, juxtaposition of color masses and abstract floral forms that hover behind the figure, and pastel-like textural effect recall the work of the French artist Odilon Redon and reflect Segal’s interest in renowned artists of the late 19th and early 20th century. The screenprint Red Nude with Black Background (1986) is stark in both line and palette by comparison. The awkwardly posed woman is minimally defined by a red outline with little shading, and reads against the black ground as a negative iteration of the Partial Nude on White compositions. These prints show Segal’s command of modernist vocabulary while remaining true to his primary mission, the depiction of ordinary subjects and objects in the everyday world.