Arnold Rönnebeck, Taos Morada, 1930

Initially trained as a sculptor at the Berlin Royal Art School, the German-born lithographer Arnold Rönnebeck (1885–1947) brought a sculptural vigor to his landscape subjects in two dimensions. In Taos Morada, Ronnebeck renders the elements of the composition as bold geometric forms ranging from the stark cubes of the chapel in the midground to the solid spheres of the clouds in the background.

Rönnebeck’s subject is the historic Morada de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe located on land belonging to the nearby Taos Pueblo. The morada was built in the early 1800s by the Penitente Brotherhood, a lay confraternity of Catholic men active in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The Penitentes were the focus of intense interest among Anglo visitors to New Mexico in the early-20th century, especially artists, who were intrigued by the buildings, religious symbols, and the mysterious rituals they encountered in the remote Hispanic villages.

Rönnebeck first came to New Mexico in 1925 at the encouragement of his friend Marsden Hartley whom he had met in Paris some twenty years earlier. While in Paris, Rönnebeck studied with Aristide Maillol and became part of the avant-garde circle that included Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as Hartley. Another member of the circle was Karl von Freyburg, Rönnebeck’s cousin and later the subject of Hartley’s famous German Officer series.

In 1923, Rönnebeck moved to New York City, and at the behest of Hartley he entered the circle of artists and writers around Alfred Stieglitz. In this milieu, Rönnebeck became acquainted with Mabel Dodge Luhan, the wealthy New York City hostess extraordinaire who had moved her salon to Taos in 1918.

As with so many artists and writers visiting Taos in the 1920s, Rönnebeck stayed with Mabel Dodge, now the doyenne of the Taos modernist colony. The visit changed both his professional and his personal life. He was deeply impressed by the landscape and the native people, and he met his future wife, Louise Emerson, whom he married in New York in 1926. Soon after, the couple moved to Denver where Rönnebeck became director of the Denver Art Museum, a position he held until 1930. The couple remained in Colorado but periodically visited New Mexico, the landscape and villages of which inspired numerous Rönnebeck lithographs, such as the one offered here, dated 1930.

In depicting the Taos Morada, Rönnebeck was one of a number of artists captivated by its setting and especially by the large black wooden cross that today still stands on the path leading to the chapel. The morada is located on property bordering Mabel Dodge Luhan’s house, providing easy access for the many artists who stayed with her. Behind her house, a narrow path led across pueblo land to the black cross, which is the oversized focal point of Ronnebeck’s print. Georgia O’Keeffe, who stayed at the Luhan house in 1929 and 1930, most famously depicted this subject in her powerful painting of 1929, Black Cross, New Mexico (Art Institute of Chicago).

The present work is a vigorous interpretation of the New Mexican landscape that reflects Rönnebeck’s aesthetic grounding in international modernism. His art exemplifies a fascinating cross-continental link among the major centers of modernism in Berlin, Munich, Paris, New York, Taos, and Santa Fe.