Outsider Folk Art Modernist Painting Dated 1959 by Peter Paul Sakowski

We recently acquired a number of paintings from the estate of the noted outsider artist Peter Paul Sakowski (1915-2000) of Holyoke, Mass. His style tended to vary from an illustrative graphic quality to the more fractured cubism he adopted during the 1950s and 60s. He was at heart a folk artist rooted in the WPA era traditions of social realism that he of came of age with in the 1930s. A recurring theme in his work of the 1950s were female dancers dressed in the iconnic sack dress of Martha Graham, with whom he appeared fascinated. This portrait of three figures demonstrates his fluid and abstract style.