Vestie Davis

Vestie Davis was born in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to New York City at the age of twenty-five in 1928. In 1947 he began painting, after a conversion experience looking in a gallery window on 57th Street. Davis focused his art on New York City landmarks, which he depicted in a bright, broadly graphic style, densely peopled by cartoonish silhouettes. Davis was represented by the Morris Gallery in Greenwich Village, after Morris Weisenthal was impressed by his work at a show on Washington Square in the 1950s.

Davis was a self-taught American artist whose works are in many important collections, including those of the American Folk Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. His work was the subject of a monographic exhibition, Vestie Davis's New York, at the American Folk Art Museum, which ran for over a year beginning in autumn 2009.