Thaddeus Mosley

Thaddeus Mosley (b. 1926, New Castle, Pennsylvania) creates monumental sculptures crafted from the salvaged wood from Pennsylvania’s forests. Using only a chisel and gauge to maintain the integrity of the original log, Mosley reworks timber—primarily from indigenous Pennsylvanian hardwoods such as cherry and walnut—into biomorphic forms. Through a process of direct carving, the artist’s marks respond to and rearticulate the natural gradations of the material’s surface. With influences ranging from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncuși—and the Bamum, Dogon, Baoulé, Senufo, Dan, and Mossi works of his personal collection—Mosley’s “sculptural improvisations,” as he calls them, also take cues from the modernist traditions of jazz. “The only way you can really achieve something is if you’re not working so much from a pattern. That’s also the essence of good jazz,” he says of his method. Mosley lives in Pittsburgh.

His work has been presented in institutional solo exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2023); Art + Practice, Los Angeles (2022); and Baltimore Museum of Art (2021), as well as group exhibitions at the Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2022); Harvard Business School, Boston (2020); Sculpture Milwaukee (2020); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2018); and Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2009), among others. Mosley’s sculptures are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; The August Wilson African American Center, Pittsburgh; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Brooklyn Museum, New York City; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Colby College Museum, Waterville, Maine; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Seattle Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.