Artist

Gene Kloss

born Oakland, CA 1903-died Taos, New Mexico 1996

Media - portrait_image_113406.jpg - 90244 — Courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Also known as: Alice Geneva Glasier
Born: Oakland, California, United States
Died: Taos, New Mexico, United States

Biography: Born in Oakland, California, in 1903, Kloss grew up in the Bay Area. She attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied with Perham Nahl, her instructor in life class and anatomy, who also gave a course in etching. Amazed by the first print she pulled from the press, Nahl predicted she would be an etcher. Kloss spent two additional years of study at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1925 she married Phillips Kloss, a poet, and they made a honeymoon journey to New Mexico. It was a decisive point in Kloss's career, initiating a lifelong fascination with the the landscape of the Southwest and the Native American peoples who inhabited the region.
National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996)
: Luce Artist Biography
Gene Kloss and her husband, the poet Phillips Kloss, were notable figures in the Anglo community of Taos. The couple visited the area in the 1920s while on their honeymoon, and looking back on her first experience of a vibrant southwestern sunset, Gene wrote that “I was a New Mexican from then on.” The Klosses lived in Berkeley, California, in the cold months and returned every summer to Taos until they settled there permanently. Phillips crafted poems while Gene produced etchings and paintings of the Pueblo communities and spectacular landscapes. They chose homes that offered inspiring views from every window, and Gene wrote that “An artist must keep in close contact with nature and man’s fundamental reliance on nature in order to produce a significant body of work.” (Bradley, Gene Kloss: Graphic Works from Six Decades, 1984)

Works by this artist (7 items)

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Gene Kloss, Midwinter in the Sangre de Cristos, ca. 1936, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.195

Midwinter in the Sangre de Cristos

Artist

Dateca. 1936

oil on canvas

Gene Kloss, Clouds at Sunset, etching and aquatint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ronald and Anne Abramson, Bernard and Sherley Koteen, Paul and Elmerina Parkman and Jack and Anne Ryan, 1981.129.12

Clouds at Sunset

Artist

etching and aquatint

Gene Kloss, To a Wedding in North House, 1973, etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.134

To a Wedding in North House

Artist

Date1973

etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper

Gene Kloss, Night Mass--Our Lady of Delores, Taos, etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Kainen, 1977.108.14

Night Mass – Our Lady of Delores, Taos

Artist

etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper