Rain in Taos Valley, 1950
Gene Kloss (American, 1903 - 1996)
etching, 18 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. (47 x 34.3 cm)
Gift of Jane and Burt Berman, 2003
2003.30.3
Gene Kloss (Alice Geneva Glasier) was born in Oakland, California. She received a Bachelors Degree of Arts from the University 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, bringing along her sixty-pound portable printing press, which they set in concrete near their campsite. They moved to Taos permanently in 1945. Kloss is best known for her prints, having 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 gradations. She is known today primarily for her many highly accomplished and innovative prints of the Western landscape and particularly of the lives and ceremonies of the many Pueblo people.