Thornton Dial, the celebrated, 87-year-old self-taught artist from Emelle, Ala., died Monday at his home in McCalla, Ala.
Dial left school at age 12, having only completed the third grade, and worked a series of blue-collar jobs before launching a long career as a metal worker for the Pullman Standard boxcar factory. In his spare time, he began making assemblages with found materials.
In 1987, self-taught artist Lonnie Holley introduced Dial to art collector William Arnett, who in turn introduced Dial to the world.
In a 2011 article for Time magazine, critic Richard Lacayo said, “Art is a word so contaminated these days by hype, misunderstanding and sales talk, it’s tempting sometimes to think we should try doing without it. Until you remember that it’s the one word spacious enough to contain what Dial does.”
Dial was the subject of a retrospective show, “Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial,” at the High Museum of Art in 2012-13. Spanning 20 years, the exhibition contained 59 works that ranged from drawings in charcoal and colored pencil to what Atlanta Journal-Constitution art critic Felicia Feaster described as “monumental, propulsive and spirited … large-scale paintings coated with tar-thick paint, insight and anger,” that addressed social injustices such as poverty, the war in Iraq and the African slave trade.
Dial’s works are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the High Museum of Art. His 42-foot sculpture dedicated to civil rights activist U.S. Rep. John Lewis resides in Freedom Park at Freedom Parkway and Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta.
Dial’s health had been declining in recent years following a stroke. When he spoke to the media at the “Hard Truths” show in 2012, he was in a wheelchair piloted by his son, Richard Dial. At that time, Dial was asked what he’d like his legacy to be.
“Think good of me,” he said.
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