Thaddeus Mosley, the self-taught artist best known for his monumental sculptures made from reclaimed wood and bronze, died on Friday at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 99. His family announced the news in a statement, which was confirmed by Karma, the gallery that represents him. No cause of death was specified.
Mosley produced artwork over the course of nearly seven decades, but he found international acclaim only within the last 10 years. In 1968, he had his first solo show at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where he lived and worked. Yet his breakout moment came in 2018, when Mosley was featured in the 57th edition of the Carnegie International, the longest-running survey of international contemporary art in North America. Soon after, he gained representation with Karma and went on to have six solo shows at the gallery’s spaces in Los Angeles and New York. The last of those shows, “Glass,” is currently on view at the gallery in Chelsea through March 28. The exhibition features a selection of small-scale sculptures the artist produced between 2010 and 2013, assembled from fragments of glass he collected decades ago from an abandoned bottle factory.
Mosley was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1926. In the late 1940s, he served in the U.S. Navy before earning degrees in English and journalism from the University of Pittsburgh. After graduating, he worked as a photographer and a freelance reporter, and in 1952, took a job with the U.S. Postal Service, where he worked until 1992.
He turned to making art in 1950, creating works he called “sculptural improvisations” that were inspired by Constantin Brâncuși, Isamu Noguchi, African sculpture, and jazz. Mosley had come across a group of teak birds in a boutique window and set out to make his own, carving small figures from fallen logs cast off by the city’s parks department. He then widened his practice to incorporate stone, bronze, and glass after studying books on sculpture at the public library, and developed his signature style, which balances sturdiness with precarity.
Circled Planes, 2020
Thaddeus Mosley
Karma
A major institutional survey of Mosley’s work opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2021, following his participation in the Carnegie International. That exhibition, titled “Thaddeus Mosley: Forest,” traveled to Art + Practice in Los Angeles and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. And in 2025, Public Art Fund invited the artist to present a selection of bronze sculptures in the park outside City Hall in New York. His work is held in the collections of museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum.
