THADDEUS MOSLEY

Thaddeus Mosley (b. 1926, New Castle, PA) is a Pittsburgh-based self-taught artistwhose monumental sculptures are crafted with the felled trees ofPittsburgh’s urban canopy, via the city’s Forestry Division; wood fromlocal sawmills; and reclaimed building materials. Using only a malletand chisel, he reworks salvaged timber into biomorphic forms. Withinfluences rang-ing from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncuși—and theBamum, Dogon, Baoulé, Senufo, Dan, and Mossi works of his personalcollection—Mosley’s sculptures mark an inflection point in the historyof American abstraction. These “sculptural improvisations,” as he callsthem, take cues from the modernist traditions of jazz. “The only wayyou can really achieve something is if you’re not working so much from apattern,” Mosley says of his improvisational method. “That’s also theessence of good jazz.” Mosley had his first Karma solo exhibition in2020, and was commissioned for the 2020 edition of Frieze Sculpture atRockefeller Center, New York.