Book of the Day > Thaddeus Mosley
● Purchase ● Long needed, the first full overview of American abstract sculptor Thad Mosley
Since 1959, the monumental, freestanding sculptures of Pittsburgh-based artist Thad Mosley, crafted with reclaimed building materials and felled trees, have occupied the forefront of abstraction in American sculpture. This book surveys his career.
Using only a mallet and chisel, he reworks salvaged timber into biomorphic forms. 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 sculptures mark an inflection point in the history of American abstraction. These “sculptural improvisations,” as he calls them, 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,” Mosley says of his improvisational method. “That’s also the essence of good jazz.”