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Gene Kloss, New Mexico Harvest, Woodcut, 10" x 14"

Biography Gene Kloss

Gene Kloss was born in 1903 in Oakland, California. She received a Bachelors Degree of Arts from the Univeristy of California, Berkeley in 1924 and studied at the California School of Fine Arts from 1924-1925. She began visiting Taos, New Mexico in 1925 with her husband, poet and composer Phillip Kloss, bringing little other than her sixty pound portable printing place, which they set in concrete near their campsite. They would spend the majority of the year in Taos, wintering in Berkeley, until they moved there permanently as year-round residents in 1945.

Gene Kloss, Coast at Carmel, Watercolor, 21" x 29"

It was as an artistic translator of New Mexico that Kloss is best known. Though an oil and watercolor painter of some renown, it is her prints, with their high contrast and rising diagonal lines that define her career stylistically. Kloss was a meticulous tinkering, constantly trying new methods in an attempt to get exactly the effect she was trying to achieve. She developed an etching form that she called “painting”, in which she painted acid directly onto the etching plate, allowing for a wide variety of tones and smooth color gradients. With this technique, she made extremely unique prints, characterized by the sharp forms of the mountains and the haloed white regions of light.

Gene Kloss, Kereson Dancers, Etching 22/50, 14" x 11"

Kloss’ work made her quite famous in her own lifetime, with numerous one-artist shows at major museums and pieces placed in the permanent collection of such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum, Library of Congress, Carnegie Institute and San Francisco Art Museum. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Design, was exhibited in Paris alongside Blumenschein, Sloan and O’Keefe, was included in “Fine Prints of the Year” and “100 Best Prints of the Year” on more than one occasion, and had her pieces distributed in schools in New Mexico for the WPA.  

Museum Collections

Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Campbell County Public Library 

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center 

Denver Art Museum 

Desert Caballeros Western Museum 

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art 

Frederick R Weisman Art Museum 

Great Plains Art Museum 

Library of Congress 

Mobile Museum of Art 

Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia Museum of New Mexico 

New York Public Library 

Oklahoma City Museum of Art 

Print Club of Albany 

San Diego Museum of Art 

Sangre De Cristo Arts Center 

Smithsonian American Art Museum 

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art 

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 

The Philbrook Museum of Art, Inc. 

Wright Museum of Art

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Gene Kloss, Indian Singer, Etching 1965, 13" x 9"