folk art

American  

noun

1. artistic works, as paintings, sculpture, basketry, and utensils, produced typically in cultural isolation by untrained often anonymous artists or by artisans of varying degrees of skill and marked by such attributes as highly decorative design, bright bold colors, flattened perspective, strong forms in simple arrangements, and immediacy of meaning.

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folk art British  

noun

1. the visual arts, music, drama, dance, or literature originating from, or traditional to, the common people of a country

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Other Word Forms

• folk-art adjective
• folkartist noun

Etymology

Origin of folk art

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

The back of the distillery unofficially doubles as one of the city’s great galleries, displaying the owners’ expansive folk art collection from floor to ceiling.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 2, 2026

The London-based Canadian-Korean artist has created cloth patchwork paintings using the bojagi technique - resulting in stained glass-style pictures showing scenes inspired by Korean folk art and ocean creatures.

From BBC • Sep. 26, 2025

Minhwa is a style of Korean folk art popular during the Chosun era, with the Hojak-do genre specializing in images of tigers, magpies and pine trees.

From Salon • Jul. 2, 2025

These are ventures — often one-person crusades — that celebrate fast food, Finnish folk art, Skid Row, skateboarding, vertebrate zoology and more.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 9, 2024

Ultimately, it led to the establishment of ethnic studies departments where courses were offered in such fields as nineteenth-century black history and Hispanic-American folk art.

From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez