Thornton Dial

Thornton Dial (September 28th, 1928-January 25, 2016) was born in in Emelle, Alabama. He began making toys from found objects as a child. He creates sculpture and painting using a variety of cast-off materials. Dial’s work addresses urgent issues in the realm of history and politics in the Unites States, such as war, racism, bigotry and homelessness. Art and architecture critic Richard Lacayo wrote in Time Magazine that “Dial’s work has sometimes been described as ‘outsider art’, a term that attempts to cover the product of everyone from naive painters like Grandma Moses to institutionalized lost souls like Martín Ramírez and full-bore obsessives like Henry Darger. But if there’s one lesson to take away from Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial, a triumphant new retrospective at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, it’s that Dial, 82, doesn’t belong within even the broad confines of that category…What he does can be discussed as art, just art, no surplus notions of outsiderness required….And not just that, but some of the most assured, delightful and powerful art around.” His work is included in the collection of the High Museum in Atlanta among others.