Horace Pippin was a selftaught AfricanAmerican painter. The injustice of slavery and American segregation figure prominently in many of his works.
He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Goshen, New York. There he attended segregated schools until he was 15, when he went to work to support his ailing mother. As a boy, Horace responded to an art supply companys advertising contest and won his first set of crayons and a box of watercolors. As a youngster, Pippin made drawings of racehorses and jockeys from Goshens celebrated racetrack. Prior to 1917, Pippin variously toiled in a coal yard, in an iron foundry, as a hotel porter and as a usedclothing peddler. He was a member of St. Johns African Union Methodist Protestant Church.
Source: Wikipedia