By Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo

BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — Bill Traylor and William Edmondson never knew one another — one lived in Alabama, the other in Tennessee; there was a 25-year age difference, and, although both were artists, they worked in vastly different media. Still, their differences are far less profound than their commonalities. Each was illiterate, and while each came to his art late in life, both were amazingly prolific. They were the first African American artists to be recognized by the so-called “conventional” art world, and both were keen observers of the human condition.

The two self-taught artists, whose works are widely considered to be at the pinnacle of “Outsider” art, are the subject of the compelling exhibit “Bill Traylor, William Edmondson and the Modernist Impulse.” The exhibition is currently on view at the Birmingham Museum of Art through April 3.

This exemplary show examines their art and their position in the context of mainstream midcentury modernism. Without training or any other outside artistic influences, these artists managed to produce work that easily held and continues to hold its own on the art scene. Each man, as his work evolved, tended toward the same abstraction seen in the modern art movement from which they were so culturally and geographically removed.

In 1937, Edmondson became the first African American artist whose work was exhibited in a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. Traylor’s work was first on view in New York in 1941. After that initial midcentury flutter of attention, interest in their art waned for several decades. Appreciation for it was revived with the 1982 show “Black Folk Art in America, 1930–1980” at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., in which their work appeared together.

Traylor, an Alabama slave who lived between 1854 and 1949, began to draw after his 83rd birthday. And although he never learned to read or write, by the time he died at 93, he left behind more than 1,800 works.

Edmondson was born near Nashville, Tenn., around 1870, but only when he was in his 60s did he begin to make the limestone carvings that are so highly regarded today.

The exhibition includes some 50 drawings and paintings by Traylor and 25 sculptures by Edmondson, along with photographs of the artists working within their communities. “The art these men made are great works to look at,” stated Gail Trechsel, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art and curator of the Traylor-Edmondson show.

Traylor’s story is extraordinary: he was born into slavery on a cotton plantation near Selma, Ala., owned by George Hartwell Traylor. He was a field hand and later a sharecropper for nearly 80 years, finally leaving the plantation as a free man after outliving two generations of owners. At 83, he settled in Montgomery, Ala., where he worked on road gangs and then in a shoe factory for as long as he was physically able. Limited to walking with two canes, Traylor then tried selling pencils. He was essentially homeless, but the owner of a local funeral home allowed him to sleep in the back room. He took his meals at the Red Bell Cafe around the corner.

By day, Traylor could be found in a chair on Monroe Avenue near the blacksmith’s shop where he drew on found pieces of cardboard using pencil and a short stick as a straight edge. His subjects were the passersby along the streets of Montgomery, and he sketched them (and the human condition) with joy and exuberance.

Traylor drew what he saw around him using simple geometric shapes that he then shaped and shaded or filled with color. His earliest efforts were simple outlines of objects of daily life ranged in rows along the page. His work evolved quickly into complex abstract constructions with tiny figures in lively motion with a frequent and free use of pattern, but the geometric essence remained

A friend taught him to make a signature on his work. Early on he would hang his work along a fence to encourage an audience. It worked like a charm. He was a popular figure in Montgomery and attracted much interest.

The young artist and photographer Charles Shannon observed him at work one day and began to visit regularly, as did his fellow members of the New South circle. Shannon began supplying Traylor with pencils, colored pencils, drawing board, brushes and paint, although the artist preferred his original simple materials. He also preferred found cardboard and paper; when good paper came his way, he would age it by leaving it out in the elements before attempting to use it. He capitalized on the stains and holes in his preferred surface, integrating them into the picture with cross-hatching, spots, circles and other vigorous patterns.

Traylor’s drawings are animated, simple at first glance, but their complexity becomes apparent on reflection. In his drawing of a couple arguing, the woman is dominant. She is upright, gesticulating, if not actually assaulting the male, who seems to shamble on his cane and crutch. The male figure is an amputee, like Traylor.

The picture was done in pencil and colored pencil, using a straight edge for some of the lines. The woman’s skirt is cross-hatched in the striking basket-weave pattern that Traylor used as he developed his technique. The composition is an observance as well as a commentary, and the humor is pretty broad.

The narrative drawing “Construction with Border” is considerably more abstract, with rows of figures all at different levels and angles. Traylor drew what he saw along the streets of Montgomery, putting his own spin on it all. His pictures truly do tell a story. Any imperfections in the drawing surface were incorporated into the overall piece. In this particular work, the rather battered paper has been given a border that makes a design element of its wear and tear.

In his “Man with Large Dog,” a dog that appears to incorporate ferocity with canine appeal overshadows the man attached to the leash. The little man wears a natty dotted shirt, which expands the humor of the image.

Traylor’s simple forms consistently convey humor and whimsy. Alcohol is a frequent subject in Traylor’s works and was apparently one of his demons.

Traylor stopped working in 1942 when he went north to live with his children. He returned in 1946 to a very different Montgomery. Forced by the local social service agencies to live with his daughter, he lost the will to work and died shortly afterward.

Edmondson was born near Nashville in about 1870 to freed slaves. He worked for the Nashville, Chattanooga and St Louis Railway for years until an accident forced him to leave the railroad and take a job as an orderly at an area hospital. Other jobs included a stint as a stone mason’s helper. After the hospital closed in 1931, Edmondson suddenly began carving, using blocks from a load of stone that was delivered to his home by error around the same time. He claimed that God had instructed him to carve.

He began with simple tombstones and memorials, later extending his range to include heavenly and earthly figures in the form of garden ornaments and freestanding figural sculpture. His work played on geometric blocks and he refined them to their simplest forms; most measured between 20 and 25 inches in height. The results were austerely elegant pieces, sometimes with only the merest suggestion of form. He himself referred to his minimalist creations as “stingy.”

Like Traylor, Edmondson worked with found materials: limestone blocks that had been used as steps, lintels, sills and curbs. Local wrecking companies delivered piles of stone to his home at little or no cost to him. His implements were also found materials: he used a sledgehammer and made himself chisels from discarded railroad spikes.

Edmondson was an active and God-fearing member of the United Primitive Baptist Church, whose teachings had a profound influence on his work. Over the 15 or so years he worked, his backyard filled up with his ethereal carved limestone likenesses of angels, biblical figures, doves, preachers, women (including Eleanor Roosevelt, Little Orphan Annie, local brides and school teachers) and an entire menagerie of animal creatures and perceived varmints. He referred to his creations as “mirkels,” miracles that God had instructed him to create. He did not give much thought to selling his work; he simply sold his carvings from his house along with the vegetables he grew in his back garden.

He never married, and may have been spurned by a co-worker at the hospital. Whatever the case, he carved many figures of women and said they were all his ladies — except for a nasty-tongued former co-worker whom he carved in an exceptionally unflattering posture.

Edmondson, like Traylor, was also discovered by a photographer: in his case, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, who was visiting in Nashville in 1936 and saw his work. He was only five years into sculpting when Dahl-Wolfe brought his work to the attention of Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art, where his first show was hung in 1937. His work, described then as “modern primitive,” was the first by an African American artist to be given a solo show at MoMA. His work was exhibited in 1938 in Paris in “Three Centuries of Art in the United States” a show organized by Barr.

Much has been made of Edmondson’s modernism. The delicacy of his work renders him both a modernist and a primitive artist at the same time, a style that evolved from within into a stunning abstract. His work was strongly linked to modernism although the barely literate artist never left Tennessee. Ill health in the 1940s caused him to stop working, and he died in 1951.

An attractive catalog edited by Josef Helfenstein and Roxanne Stanulisand containing essays by eight recognized authorities contains a plethora of photographs of the art as well as period photographs of the artists. It is available at the Birmingham Museum store.

The exhibition will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem and The Menil Collection in Houston later this year.

The Birmingham Museum of Art is at 2000 Eight Avenue North. For information, 205-254-2565 or www.artsbma.org.