Earl W. Stroh, painter and printmaker, was born on 3 September 1924, in Buffalo, New York. He studied at the Art Institute of Buffalo, the Art Students League of New York with Edwin Dickinson, the University of New Mexico, and the Atelier Friedlander in Paris. In 1947, Stroh moved to Taos, New Mexico where he worked with Andrew Dasburg and Tom Benrimo. He was well-connected in Taos and became part of the group of artists known as the Taos Moderns.

In 1940, the heiress Helene Wurlitzer first visited Taos, New Mexico and purchased fourteen acres near the Taos plaza and an adobe home. She divided her time between Cincinnati and Taos for about fourteen years until she settled permanently in Taos. The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation became the Taos-based Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico and the foundation’s grants gave financial support to visual, literary and musical artists. Wurlitzer became Stroh’s patron and he received a grant from her foundation that allowed him to study etching with Johnny Friedlaender at Atelier Friedlaender in Paris for several years in the mid 1950s.

Earl Stroh began making original lithographs in 1970 when he was invited to be the artist-in-residence at the University of New Mexico's Tamarind Institute. While working at Tamarind, an apprentice printer asked Stroh where he got the patience to execute such meticulous work and he responded, “It’s not patience, it is necessity. The only way I can get what I want is slowly and carefully.” His subjects are usually panoramic landscapes in which he sought to express “a unity and the possibility of an openness of all forms to all others.” Despite the softness and tranquility of his images, they are, as one observed, “made of steel.” Stroh also experimented with solar etching at Lynch Press in Taos.

Stroh’s work has been exhibited at the Library of Congress, the Oklahoma Art Center, the Museum of Fine Arts Santa Fe, the Roswell Museum and Art Center, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Harwood Museum of Art, the Galerie Seder in Paris, and the Willard Gallery and the World House Galleries of New York.

The work of Earl W. Stroh is represented in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas.

Earl W. Stroh died in Santa Fe, New Mexico on July 3, 2005.