Loretta Pettway

Loretta Pettway is an American artist and quilt maker of the Gee's Bend Collective from Boykin, Alabama. While often equated with abstract paintings by white men, these quilts are solely the products of the needs and aesthetics of the African American women who made them. Art critics worldwide have compared the quilts to the works of important artists such as Henri Matisse and Paul Klee. The New York Times called the quilts “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced. Pettway first learned how to quilt by assisting her grandmother with assembling patches, threading needles. Her quilts are in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Courtesy of Approximately Blue