A broken wheel accident began one of the greatest eras of modern art in this country known as the Taos Society of Artists. In 1898 Ernest L. Blumenschein and Bert Phillips were traveling from Denver and in northern New Mexico and experienced a rough road that caused the wheel of their to break. Blumenschein left Phillips to watch the wagon full of supplies while he ventured to Taos to get the wheel fixed. When he returned three days later they continued to Taos. When they reached their destination they had a change of heart. The two artists sold their horse and equipment, set up a studio and began to paint.
Ernest Leonard Blumenschein (May 26, 1874 – June 6, 1960) was an American artist and founding member of the Taos Society of Artists. His paintings feature images of the American Southwest with an emphasis of art on the Indigenous people of New Mexico. In 1915, he became a co-founder of the Taos Society of Artists along with fellow artists Bert Phillips and Joseph Henry Sharp.
Joseph Henry Sharp
Joseph Henry Sharp (September 27, 1859 – August 29, 1953) is considered the spiritual father of the Taos Society of Artists. One of the earliest European-American artists to visit Taos in 1893. His paintings inluded Native American portraits, cultural life and Western landscapes. President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned Sharp to paint the portraits of 200 Native American warriors who survived the Battle of Little Bighorn. Harper’s Weekly commissioned him to document native life at Taos Pueblo.
Bert Geer Phillips (July 15, 1868 – June 16, 1956) was an American artist and a founding member of the Taos Society of Artist. He settled in Taos in 1898. As word got out about the opportunity to paint magnificent landscapes and Indigenous people more artist arrived. The Second Wave of Taos artists advanced modern art by infusing it with a distinctive spirit: reflective, radical and deeply connected to place. Taos, already celebrated for its luminosity and dramatic landscapes, became a magnet for these innovators. Known as Taos Moderns they rejected regionalism, social realism and commercial tropes in favor of bold abstraction and a reimagined landscape genre.
The “Second Wave” of Taos artist was followed by World War II. Returning veterans took advantage of the G.I bill using their monthly stipend to live and work in northern New Mexico. Some of these artists included: Emil Bisttram, Norman Bluhm, Lawrence Calcagno, John Chamberlain, Richard Diebenkorn, Ted Egri, Robert M. Ellis, Leo Garel, Fredrick Hammersley, Cliff Harmon, Janet Lippincott, Beatrice Mandelman, Louis Ribak, Oli Sihvonen, Earl Stroh, and others.