Artist

Gina Schnaufer Knee

born Marietta, OH 1898-died Riverhead, NY 1982
Also known as
  • Gina Knee
  • Gina Schnaufer
Born
Marietta, Ohio, United States
Died
Riverhead, New York, United States
Active in
  • Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
  • Sag Harbor, New York, United States
  • North Haven, New York, United States
  • Savannah, Georgia, United States
Biography

Painter. Born in Marietta, Ohio, Knee was drawn to New Mexico by an exhibition of John Marin's watercolors, which she saw in New York in 1930. The next summer in Taos, while studying with Ward Lockwood, she experienced firsthand the powerful landscape forms that had influenced Marin. Several years later, she married the photographer Ernest Knee and settled in Santa Fe. Like Marin, whom she greatly admired, Knee distilled geometric forms from observed nature, refining her watercolors into confident, modernist statements. Ten years in New Mexico left an indelible imprint on her work. Married in 1945 to painter Alexander Brook, Knee continued to paint, exhibit, and teach, first in Georgia and then at Sag Harbor, New York.


References
Cassidy, Ina Sizer. "Art and Artist of New Mexico: Gina Knee." New Mexico Magazine 17 (February 1939): 23–28.

Johnson, Spud. "Impressions of Some Watercolors by Gina Knee." New Mexico Quarterly 12 (August 1942): 301–3.

Eldredge. Ward Lockwood, 1894–1963, p. 43.

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)