WAndreas Alariesto, was a Finnish painter from Sompio, Lapland, who worked in the naïve style. He also made miniatures and sculptures about miniatures, and was also a photographer. He had no formal artistic training.
WMarino Auriti (1891–1980) was an Italian-born American self-taught artist. An auto-mechanic by trade, Auriti is best known for his 1950s architectural model The Encyclopedic Palace of the World. Auriti designed Encyclopedic Palace/Palazzo Enciclopedico/Palacio Enciclopedico/Palais Encyclopédique or Monumento Nazionale. Progetto Enciclopedico Palazzo to house the entirety of worldly knowledge and human discovery: "all the works of man in whatever field, discoveries made and those which may follow."
WJean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
WArthur Bispo do Rosário was a Brazilian outsider artist. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he lived in a psychiatric institution in Rio de Janeiro for 50 years, where he created works of art with found objects, as part of a "divine mission". His works gained recognition among art critics when they were first displayed at the Venice Biennale in 1995.
WDavid Butler (1898–1997) was an African American sculptor and painter from Good Hope, Louisiana. His style is epitomized by kinetic sculptures made from recycled tin or wood, which he embellished with saturated colors and geometric patterns. His work is now in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
WHenry Joseph Darger Jr. was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story.
WThornton Dial was a pioneering African-American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. Dial's works are widely held in American museums; ten of Dial's works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.
WThomas "Sam" Doyle (1906–1985) was an African-American artist from Saint Helena Island, South Carolina. His colorful paintings on sheet metal and wood recorded the history and people of St. Helena’s Gullah community.
WWilliam Edmondson was the first African-American folk art sculptor to be given a one-person show exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1937).
WMagdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.
WAnna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is often cited as an example of an individual who successfully began a career in the arts at an advanced age. Her works have been shown and sold in the United States and abroad and have been marketed on greeting cards and other merchandise. Moses' paintings are displayed in the collections of many museums. Sugaring Off was sold for US$1.2 million in 2006.
WHorace Pippin was a self-taught American artist who painted a range of themes, including scenes inspired by his service in World War I, landscapes, portraits, and biblical subjects. Some of his best-known works address the U.S.'s history of slavery and racial segregation. He was the first Black artist to be the subject of a monograph, Selden Rodman's Horace Pippin, A Negro Painter in America (1947), and the New York Times eulogized him as the "most important Negro painter" in American history. He is buried at Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery in West Goshen Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania State historical Marker at 327 Gay Street, West Chester, Pennsylvania identifies his home at the time of his death and commemorates his accomplishments.
WHenri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.
WNelly Anna Charlotta Walden was a Swedish painter, art collector, and writer. A key figure in the activities of Berlin-based avant-garde magazine Der Sturm, Walden was a pioneer of abstract art and was married to German writer Herwarth Walden.
WAdolf Wölfli was a Swiss artist who was one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label.
WKorczak Ziolkowski was the Polish-American designer and sculptor of the Crazy Horse Memorial.