Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as Grandma Moses, was a self-taught American artist and one of the leading representatives of primitivism

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as Grandma Moses, was a self-taught American artist and one of the leading representatives of primitivism. Anna began to paint when she was already over 70. Almost all her life she worked on farms in the states of New York and Virginia. A farmer's wife, she was the mother of ten children (five of whom died in infancy).

She had always been fond of needlework and embroidery, but at the age of 77 arthritis made it difficult for her to hold a needle. She then turned to painting. In 1938 the collector Louis Caldor happened to see her pictures in the window of a chemist's shop in the village of Hoosick Falls, tracked down the elderly artist and promised to make her famous. That same year, with the collector's help, three of Anna's works were shown at MoMA in the exhibition "Contemporary Unknown American Painters", and two years later her first solo exhibition took place. She was then 80 years old. Grandma Moses soon won international recognition.

Her pictures, full of nostalgia for quiet country life, found a wide response in the years of the Second World War and the Cold War. Before long, reproductions of Anna Mary's works appeared on packets of coffee and cigarettes, on postcards, stamps and billboards; her solo exhibitions broke attendance records all over the world.

Grandma Moses took fame calmly and considered her "wonderful grandchildren" her chief achievement. Anna Mary died in 1961, having lived to the age of 101.