Thornton Dial: From Bessemer to the Cosmos
Edel Assanti is pleased to present From Bessemer to the Cosmos, the first UK solo exhibition of large-scale paintings and assemblages by late American artist Thornton Dial (1928–2016), organised in collaboration with MARCH Gallery. Coinciding with the ten year anniversary of the artist’s death in 2016, the exhibition brings together a selection of major, mostly unseen works produced during a pivotal decade of Dial’s career, from 1988 to 1998.
In the late summer of 1987, artist Lonnie Holley introduced his friend and collector, William S. Arnett, to Thornton Dial, marking the beginning of the first stage of Dial’s artistic career. Conversational in tone, the earliest works in From Bessemer to the Cosmos emerged from the rhythms of everyday life in Pipe Shop, Dial’s neighborhood in Bessemer, Alabama. This local grounding imbued his paintings and assemblages with an authenticity that resonated beyond Dial’s immediate audience, quickly attracting attention from a broader and increasingly diverse viewership. Six years after that first meeting, Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger opened simultaneously across the New Museum and the American Folk Art Museum in New York (1993). Curator and art historian Lowery Stokes Sims noted in the exhibition’s brochure: “As Dial continues his artistic journey, following his own agenda, it will be increasingly difficult to classify him simply as 'folk,’ or ‘naive,’ or ‘outside,’ and thus Dial will forcefully challenge the hierarchical language that we bring to the discussion of various genres of art.”
By all accounts, Dial’s artistic trajectory was unusual, especially considering the complex realities of class and racial disparities in America. Working since the age of five, Dial, in his own words, undertook almost "every kind of work a man can do”: he spent three decades as a metalworker for the Pullman Standard railroad plant in Bessemer, Alabama, and worked in a variety of skilled trades such as house painting, bricklaying, pipe fitting, and carpentry. These experiences, together with vernacular traditions that elude formal institutions – the yard shows of the American South, patchwork quilting, and the gospel church – coalesced into a visual lexicon uniquely his own. Through Dial’s incisive mark-making, From Bessemer to the Cosmos narrates the African-American experience across the twentieth century and beyond: from sharecropping in the Black Belt and the Great Migration, to the struggles and triumphs of the civil rights movement and complexities of identity in a rapidly shifting postmodern America.
Despite inherent obstacles and persistent misunderstandings, over the ten years charted by this exhibition Dial’s work grew in scale, material complexity, and thematic ambition, employing animistic symbols and evocative titles to convey both his personal life and the broader history of Black experience. From Bessemer to the Cosmos depicts the critical period of Dial’s practice where his gaze - previously focused on his immediate community and surroundings - expanded to encompass the broader world, from his home in Bessemer, Alabama to the edges of the cosmos and the confines of life itself.
About Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial (b.1928, Emelle, AL, US, d.2016, McCalla, AL, US), lived and worked in Bessemer, Alabama, US. Dial has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at museums and institutions, including the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, Samford University Art Gallery, Birmingham, AL and Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL (2022–23); Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (2020); High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2016); Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN (2011); New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA (2011); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2005); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1993); American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY (1993); and was included in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York, NY (2000).
Dial’s work is held in the collections of many prestigious institutions, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among many others.
