Earl W. Stroh, Taos Makimono Suite, Print II, 1975

Most of [Earl’s] life was spent in Taos; at the Wurlitzer Foundation, then at his elegantly simple home in Talpa, which was as much studio as house. But he was singularly a citizen of the world; grown as an Easterner in Buffalo, New York, lived in New York City and Paris, trekked through Bolivia, hospitalized in Rio de Janeiro and traveled throughout Europe chasing the wisdom of his predecessors in art. At a party in Denver for the unveiling of what is now his last completed oil, Earl disdained the meaning of any particular painting. For the meaning was the work, and so to be worked at, completed, and certainly not talked about. Perhaps that is the ethical aspect he embodied, a philosophy partly influenced by the Austrian novelist Hermann Broch and his novel, Earl’s beloved “The Death of Virgil.”

In 2004 the Harwood mounted a show of his monumental “Makimono Suite,” a lithographic [quadriptych] that is as intricate a print work as may be visually possible in the medium. On one wall was hung the lithograph. On the opposite wall was a silverpoint drawing replicating the complete lithograph. In between on the side walls were the individual prints from each stone in the piece – a dramatic display of the vision involved in building the whole of the artwork. I had missed the opening of the show but visited several weeks later and toured the quiet museum on a weekday afternoon with Earl and David Witt, the then-curator at the Harwood who had mounted the show. That experience was extraordinary, hearing from the horses’ mouths – both artist and curator – about how a man who professed to be lost with the logic of math had played this magnificent 3-dimensional chess game in color. Earl was extremely pleased with the logistics of the show and praised David’s care in treating his work. It was the first time he had seen his suite framed as he had envisioned it all along. His work did not end until the hanging and only then was he satisfied.
— Pete Warzel, “Earl Remembered”

Earl Stroh was born in Buffalo, New York, and studied at the Art Institute of Buffalo, the Art Students League of New York, the University of New Mexico, and the Atelier Friedlander in Paris. In 1947 he moved to Taos, New Mexico, where he worked with Andrew Dasburg and Tom Benrimo. He began making original lithographs in 1970 and was chosen several times as a guest artist at the University of New Mexico’s Tamarind Institute. His subjects are usually panoramic landscapes in which he seeks to express “a unity and the possibility of an openness of all forms to all others.” His artworks are held in a number of important collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Dallas Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Fort Worth Arts Center, the Harwood Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Roswell Museum and Art Center.

Ref: Pete Warzel, “Earl Remembered” (2005) http://www.peskytaosinsect.com/?fuseaction=home.viewarticle&article_id=939