A genuinely naïve painter, Taylor was feted in the press as ‘the spiv who found he had genius’. He found himself at the centre of the 1960s art world’s love affair with ‘primitive’ art. In 1966 an observer article entitled ‘Primitives in Private’ recognised the enormous popularity in naïve art at the time: ‘With their uninhibited and innocent vision, their instinctive techniques, primitive artists in Britain are becoming wildly popular’, It included a short interview with Taylor and reproductions of his work. An East Ender living in the Old Kent Road he was discovered in his thirties and taken up by the Mayfair galleries. Described as unskilled and barely literate, his first London show had sold out on the opening day. He exhibited with the Redfern Gallery and the Mercury Gallery amongst others. His 1966 View of Toile is held in the Kettles Yard collection.
A genuinely naïve painter, Taylor was feted in the press as ‘the spiv who found he had genius’. He found himself at the centre of the 1960s art world’s love affair with ‘primitive’ art. In 1966 an observer article entitled ‘Primitives in Private’ recognised the enormous popularity in naïve art at the time: ‘With their uninhibited and innocent vision, their instinctive techniques, primitive artists in Britain are becoming wildly popular’, It included a short interview with Taylor and reproductions of his work. An East Ender living in the Old Kent Road he was discovered in his thirties and taken up by the Mayfair galleries. Described as unskilled and barely literate, his first London show had sold out on the opening day. He exhibited with the Redfern Gallery and the Mercury Gallery amongst others. His 1966 View of Toile is held in the Kettles Yard collection.
