Gene Kloss (1903–96). Adobes in the Snow. 1944. Etching. Image: 8 x 11 ½ in. Sheet size: 12 3/4 x 17 ¾ in. Artist’s notation in pencil: Ed 50, l/l margin; titled l/l margin; signed l/r margin. Archivally framed: 17 x 20 ½ in. Excellent condition. $9,500.
$9,500.00
A Picturesque Winter Scene of Northern New Mexico
Adobes in the Snow encapsulates Gene Kloss’ intimacy with Southwestern subject matter, showing a few, low lying adobe homes blanketed in winter snow. Kloss was a master of design, working primarily from her mental impressions rather than from sketches or photographs. She described what guided her art as follows: “I want the finished print to enable the viewer to see the design, the subject matter from across the room, at arm’s length or under a magnifying glass—also upside-down for satisfactory abstract design.”
Born Alice Geneva Glaiser, the artist took her husband’s last name and used “Gene” as her first. She and Phillips Kloss were native to California and first visited New Mexico on their honeymoon in 1925, where, as she states, “We entered the Magdalena plain at sunset—one of those incredible ones that was made of color. I was a New Mexican from then on.” For many years, the couple lived part-time in Taos and spent winters in Berkeley, then moved permanently to Taos after World War II. In the 1920s, Gene was able to make a meager income selling her prints. Then during the 1930s, she was given the opportunity to fully develop her art within the easel division of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project.
Kloss’s artworks have been acquired by a number of important collections, including the Carnegie Institute, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of New Mexico, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the San Francisco Art Museum.
Refs.: Clinton Adams, Printmaking in New Mexico, 1880–1990 (1991); David Clemmer, Serenading the Light: Painters of the Southwest (2003); Porter, Ebie & Campbell, Taos Artists and Their Patrons, 1898–50 (1999).
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