California Coast, Mendocino County, California

Gene Kloss

In 1936, during the Great Depression, the Klosses were spending time between their home in Northern California and their adopted home in Taos, New Mexico where she worked with the WPA. Gene did a number of intaglios up and down the California coast. She commented in her book "Gene Kloss Etchings": "The northern California coast has many a bleak little harbor unspoiled by commercial development, many a bleak promontory untouched by civilization...Behind the bleakness in the coast hills grow...Sequoia sempervirens, the tallest and oldest trees in the world, their fragrant leaf-fronds precipitating fog during the rainless summers, always cool and lush, and you can hear the song of the russet-backed thrush."

This Pacific ocean inlet is located in Mendocino County, north of San Francisco above Sonoma County, and has been an artists' inspirational destination for many decades.

Gene Kloss, painter and printmaker, was born Alice Geneva Glasier on 27 July 1903 in Oakland, California. She graduated with honors from the University of California Berkeley in 1924. During her last semester in UC Berkeley, Kloss participated in seminar given by Perham Nahl and with his encouragement she made her first etching. She further her studies for another two years attending classes at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California.

In 1925, she wed the poet Phillips Kloss and they visited Taos, New Mexico for the first time. Also, this year, she stopped using her first name, shortened her middle name to Gene, and used her husband's surname. In de-feminizing her name, Gene Kloss' work was selected for exhibitions without the prejudicial, sexist discrimination encountered by women in all fields.

Gene and Phillips divided their year between Berkeley, California and Taos, New Mexico until they settled permanently in Taos in 1953. During the Depression Kloss made prints for the PWAP and WPA/FAP in New Mexico but during the World War II the Klosses spent most of their time in Berkeley, where Phillips worked in a shipyard. After the war, they began building their home near Taos.