Iconic Pittsburgh sculptor Thaddeus G. Mosley Jr. dies at 99

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

90.5 WESA | By Bill O'Driscoll
Published March 7, 2026 at 10:29 AM EST
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Thad Mosley at work in his studio in an undated photo.
Nate Guidry
/
Courtesy of the Mosley Family
Thad Mosley at work in his studio in an undated photo.
Internationally known sculptor Thaddeus G. Mosley Jr., for decades one of Pittsburgh’s most beloved artists, died Friday at age 99.

Mosley and his monumental abstract sculptures made from salvaged wood have been a constant presence on the local art scene since the 1950s. According to a statement released by his family, he died at his North Side home after a period of hospice care.

"Our hearts are broken to share the passing of our father, Thaddeus Mosley,” said Khari Mosley, a Pittsburgh City Councilor and one of Mosley’s six children, in a statement.

“He was a dedicated family man, ubiquitous community pillar, and an inimitable creative force who embodied the hard-working ethos of his blue-collar Western Pennsylvanian roots and the innovative essence of the classic jazz music that served as his spiritual inspiration," the councilor said in the statement.

Mosley's work ethic was legendary. For decades, he went to work daily at his sculpture studio in an industrial park in the city’s Chateau neighborhood. He carved by hand, with a mallet, maul and chisels, in a studio teeming with sculptures, like a forest of leafless trees.

“He so loved to sculpt," said artist James Simon, a longtime friend, “and that is an inspiration for all artists”

“To me, a day is a day. They just have different names for them,” Mosley quipped to an interviewer in 2018.

Success after 90
Mosley’s public artworks include the 14-foot-tall “Phoenix,” at the corner of Centre Avenue and Dinwiddie, and “Mountaintop,” at Herron and Milwaukee streets, both in the Hill District. He also has public works at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Eastside Bond Plaza, and the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, and several of his distinctive sculptures are on permanent display at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.

The latter placement is apt, as Mosley and August Wilson, then a struggling poet, met in the ’60s as members of a group of Black artists who congregated in the Hill.

Man poses with sculpture
Nate Guidry
/
Courtesy of the Mosley Family
Mosley in his studio
Another career highlight was a 2009 solo exhibition at Mattress Factory that recreated his studio and included some 100 of his sculptures.

“I really feel like his work reflected the resilience and the resourcefulness of this city,” said Anastasia James, director of galleries and public art for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, which announced last year it would include eight bronzes by Mosley in its first round of public art for the new Arts Landing site opening next month.

“He was such a part of our community,” said Janis Burley, president and CEO of the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. “To be such a global figure but still be so present is what sets Thad Mosley apart from so many artists I’ve met over the years. He was there. If you called him he was there. He made time for people.”

But while Mosley has long been well-known in Pittsburgh — he was named Pittsburgh Center for the Arts’ Artist of the Year in 1979 — the self-taught artist achieved much of his acclaim after age 90. At 92, his work was featured in the prestigious Carnegie International.

The following year, he secured representation by the contemporary art gallery Karma, whose New York location is currently hosting “Glass,” an exhibition of Mosley’s small-scale glass sculptures.

In recent years, Mosley’s work has been exhibited in museums around the U.S. and as far afield as the Musée National Eugène Delacroix in Paris, and Bergen Kunsthall in Norway.

His legacy will continue to grow. Next month, his bronze “Touching the Earth” will be the inaugural installation at Arts Landing, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s new Downtown civic space. (The work was commissioned by the Public Art Fund for a 2025 exhibition at New York’s City Hall Park.)

'Weight in space'
Mosley was born in 1926, in New Castle, one of five children of Helen Fagan Poole and Thaddeus Mosley Sr., a coal miner. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and studied journalism at the University of Pittsburgh, from which he graduated in 1950.

In the 1950s, he was a sportswriter at the Pittsburgh Courier, then the nation’s largest Black newspaper. He later spent nearly 40 years working as a mail sorter for the U.S. Postal Service.

It was during that time that he began his art career, at first by hand-carving two-by-fours in imitation of animal sculptures displayed on coffee tables at the old Kaufmann’s department store Downtown. He eventually moved into abstraction, with influences including African tribal art and the pioneering Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

“My main idea, of course, is the idea of weight in space, and that idea is that the piece, the sculpture, should look like it's levitating, it should look like there is movement,” Mosley said.

Sculptures in a park
Bill O'Driscoll
/
90.5 WESA
Sculptures by Thad Mosley at the site of Downtown's Arts Landing in August 2025.
Other inspirations included classic jazz. Pictures of Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughn were among the images that papered the cinder-block walls of his studio.

His art career brought him friendships with other art figures with Pittsburgh ties, including August Wilson, pianist Ahmad Jamal and artist David Lewis.

Along the way, Mosley also mentored many in the community.

One friend and admirer is Bill Strickland, who met Mosley in the late '60s, when Strickland was a University of Pittsburgh student in the process of founding Manchester Craftsmen's Guild.

“He was calm as a teacher and he was very encouraging of me. Because I was just starting out, man," said Strickland, who went on to become an internationally known educator and community leader. "When you’re young as I was, that kind of quality mentorship was gold, man, gold."

Kilolo Luckett, founding executive director and chief curator of the art center ALMA LEWIS, met Mosley as a college student in the early ’90s and considers him a key mentor.

“He really shaped my curatorial practice and wanting to aspire to be an art historian just through his mind, his capacious curiosity, and thinking globally about how art is embedded in everything we do,” she said. “He had this high sense of craftsmanship — I was like, ‘This person is just one of a kind.’”

Mosley’s work is in the collections of numerous museums, including the Carnegie Museum of Art; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; and Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.

Other career highlights include “Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder,” a two-person presentation in 2024 with one of his art heroes at the Seattle Art Museum; and his 2021 solo exhibition “Forest,” at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, which traveled to Art + Practice, in Los Angeles, and Nasher Sculpture Center, in Dallas.

Mosley also taught art, at the Touchstone Center for Crafts in Farmington, Pa., as well as at workshops and lectures settings from elementary and graduate schools to prisons, according to the statement from his family.

His family also noted that he served as “a motivational father figure on Pittsburgh’s North Side for dozens of young African-American men who were close friends and associates of his two youngest sons, Anire and Khari.”

Mosley is survived by his six children, Anire, Khari, Martel and Lorna Mosley, Rochelle Sisco and Tereneh Idia; as well as eight grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his longtime companion, Teruyo Seya.

A private memorial service for the family will be followed by details about a public celebration of life. In lieu of flowers, the Mosley family asks supporters to contribute to a Thaddeus Mosley Memorial Fund, to be established by the family.

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