Walter Ufer is remembered for dazzling New Mexico sunlight. His portraits and landscapes of Taos Indian life dance and shimmer. His paintings are a true expression of the Land of Enchantment.

He was a member of the famed Taos Society of Artists, a group including Joseph Henry Sharp, Ernest Blumenshein, E. Irving Couse, Oscar Beringhaus, H. Herbert (Buck) Dunton and Bert Phillips.

The Taos Society of Artists were all deeply touched by the Native American and Mexican people living in the peaceful village of Taos. They loved the place so much that after they arrived, they never left. They built their studios and their artistic lives in Taos, and dedicated their art, as Ernest Blumenshein later wrote, "to the beauty and artistic promise of northern New Mexico.

Later, Helen Greene Blumenshein, daughter of Taos painter Ernest Blumenshein and Taos historian, wrote in her personal "Early Remembrances," "Walter Ufer captured the sunlight of New Mexico as no other artist has done since."

Walter Ufer was born in Huckeswagen, Germany. At the age of four, his family moved to Louisville, Kentucky where his father was a gunsmith. His artistic talent was noted early and encouraged. After apprenticing with a Louisville lithographer, Walter studied in Dresden, Germany at the Royal Applied Art Schools and the Royal Academy.

During his seven-year-long residency in Germany, he met two American students, Joseph Henry Sharp and Ernest Blumenschein. Years later, he would visit them in Taos and and become their neighbor and artistic colleague.

After Germany his studies in Germany, Walter moved to Chicago where he worked as a commercial illustrator. He continued his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the age of 35, Walter married Mary Fredericksen in 1911. They had quite the honeymoon, traveling to Paris, Italy and North Africa.

While in Chicago, Walter found some patrons and benefactors. His first patron was Mayor Carter Harrison. It was Harrison, along with his friend, meat packer Oscar Meyer, who arranged to send Walter Ufer (now 38 years old) to Taos on a painting trip in 1914.

In Taos, Walter reconnected with Joseph Sharp and Ernest Blumenschein whom he had met as students in Germany, and like them, Walter was infatuated with Taos.

What astounds me about Walter's paintings is how he was able to capture the magical quality of Taos light. Up until his trip to New Mexico, Walter lived his entire life at low altitudes, livng in places with high humidity and cloud cover, like Cinncinati, Dresden, Chicago. Perhaps he was able to depict the New Mexico high desert air and light so well is because he was seeing it new for the first time.

Beyond the landscape and sunlight, Walter found the Taos Indians most captivating. He had long believed in individual freedoms and dignity of the common man. He was a devout socialist and a friend and adherent of Leon Trotsky. He saw the Taos Indians as people who had been oppressed for centuries, and was very sensitive to how the racial and cultural heritage of the Taos Indians was being systematically wiped out.

Having lived and worked with the Taos Indians, over time Walter felt the pain of the Taos Indians as they were losing their culture. He said of them, "The Indian has lost his race pride. He wants only to be an American. Our civilization has terrific power. We don't feel it, but that man out there in the mountains feels it, and he cannot cope with such pressure."

Walter made the Taos Indians the major focus of this paintings. He described how he approached painting the Taos Indians, "I paint the Indian as he is. In the garden digging--in the field working--riding amongst the sage--meeting his woman in the desert--angling for trout--in meditation."

He loved the Taos Indians and was an advocate for their issues and well being. During the great flu pandemic of 1918, Walter worked night and day assisting Taos' only doctor in treating the sick. If he had an opportunity to ponder his life's greatest contribution, he may well have responded to his work during this dark time helping his friends and neighbors in their darkest hour.

But when he was down, he suffered long periods of desolation. He was moody, unproductive, and his time was taken up drinking and gambling, often borrowing money he seldom paid back. These self-destructive behaviors eroded the quality of the remaining years of his life and kept him from reaching his full artistic potential.

Up until the Great Depression, what held his life together were his paintings sales. They sold well during the 1920's and he achieved a high profile. Between 1916 and 1926, he was included in the membership of the National Academy of Design in New York and his paintings were included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. He also enjoyed the patronage of William Henry Klauer, a wealthy businessman from Dubuque, Iowa.

But when the Great Depression hit in 1929, the art market crashed too. Buyers for paintings vanished, and all the support Walter had grown to rely upon was gone. His alcoholism took over. His cause of death in 1935 was officially appendicitis, but his health had slipped away over the early 1930's due to chronic alcoholism. He died at the early age of 60, penniless, leaving nothing for his widow. Helen Greene Blumenshein writes that her father took up a collection for Walter's widow.

Tragic endings aren't rare in the art world. Sometimes the creative intensity of an artist's life is matched by a dark side which leads to self destruction. So it was with with Vincent Van Gogh in France, Jules Tavernier in Hawaii, Paul Gauguin in the Marquesas, Jackson Pollock in New York, and so many others. So it was with Walter Ufer. But let us celebrate his humanity and his marvelous gift to the world, his marvelous New Mexico light. Let us remember his vision, his passion for the Taos Indians and his marvelous painting.

As Helen Greene Blumenshein wrote in her personal Early Remembrances, "Walter Uber captured the sunlight of New Mexico as no other artist has done since."

A NEW EDWARD HOPPER EXHIBITION
Edward Hopper’s New York
Oct 19, 2022 - March 5, 2023
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Recently, we looked back at the phenomenal Edward Hopper exhibition held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Now, a new major Edward Hopper exhibition is to be held in New York. Hopper lived in New York for almost 60 years. This exhibition at the Whitney Museum looks at Hopper's paintings of New York. And yes, Night Hawks will be there!

Link to the Whitney Museum Hopper Exhibition page

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

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