Emil Bisttram (1895-1976)

Hungarian-born Emil Bisttram (1895-1976) achieved early success as an artist, studying and teaching at several prominent art schools, including the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, Parson’s, and the Master Institute of the Roerich Museum.

Bisttram’s early work in Taos was representational, portraying Native American dancers, local landscapes and architecture, and portraits of people he encountered. But, though he continued with representational painting, much of Bisttram’s work in the late 1930s became increasingly abstract. Like many other modernists, much of his later work was strongly influenced by the bright colors and abstract forms of Wassily Kandinsky. Along with Raymond Jonson, Bisttram founded the Transcendental Painting Group in 1938, a group of artists whose goal was to ‘carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world’ by employing non-objective imagery to communicate spiritual truths.

Bisttram lived and worked in Taos until his death in 1976.

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