(New Mexico Landscape)

Gene Kloss

A lush, impressionistic landscape of the Taos countryside by this important New Mexico printmaker and painter. Her palette and style in this work are similar to her major watercolor "Rio Grande" done in 1947. In this composition, she captures the delicate, ephemeral transition from spring to summer in the high desert, when plant life is especially verdant.

There is a small tear in the bottom right margin; the artist signed the work a second time above the tear.

Gene Kloss (1903-1996) was born Alice Geneva Glasier in Oakland, California. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with honors in art in 1924, and the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. With the encouragement of her professor, Perham Nahl, she began etching in 1927. In 1925 she married poet/author Phillips Kloss and shortened her name, adopting the masculine form of her middle name so that her work would be viewed with an unprejudiced eye and entry into exhibitions would not be denied her.

Gene and Phillips divided their time between Berkeley and Taos hauling her Sturges press each way until settling 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.

Gene Kloss died in Taos, New Mexico on 24 June 1996.