Andrew Dasburg
- Also known as
- Andrew Michael Dasburg
- Born
- Paris, France
- Died
- Taos, New Mexico, United States
- Active in
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
- Biography
Painter. Dasburg was born in Paris but moved to the United States when he was five. His training began at the Art Students League with Kenyon Cox and Birge Harrison; it continued with Robert Henri and numerous visits to the circle of Gertrude Stein in Paris. His early work, which was included in the Armory Show of 1913, was inspired by contemporary European artists, particularly Cézanne, Matisse, and the Futurists. In 1918, encouraged by Mabel Dodge (Luhan) and Maurice Sterne, he spent a summer in Taos. From then on he returned either to Taos or to Santa Fe for part of each year, becoming one of the first modernists to form an attachment to the region. He also became an avid collector of and dealer in Hispanic and Indian crafts. In 1933 he settled permanently in New Mexico, continuing to employ a modified form of Cubism to find structure and meaning in the landscape.
References
Bywaters, Jerry. Andrew Dasburg. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1959.Coke. Andrew Dasburg.
Udall. Modernist Painting in New Mexico, pp. 55–70.
Charles Eldredge, Julie Schimmel, and William H. Truettner Art in New Mexico, 1900–1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1986)
- Luce Artist Biography
An article in a 1934 issue of Time described Andrew Dasburg as a man “who looks like Beethoven and tortures himself in order to translate Taos light into oil painting.” He made his first trip to the Southwest in 1918 and settled in New Mexico for good in 1933. Dasburg’s paintings incorporate bright colors, the geometric shapes of adobe architecture, and the shimmering effects of light on the expansive landscape. A contemporary critic described his paintings as “stained with exotic color . . . hot yellow fields punctuated by bushes of smoldering crimson and houses sweltering in color.” (Whitney, Spirited Visions: The Art of Andrew Dasburg, 1999)