Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau

Ernest Blumenschein (1874-1960), one of the founders of the Taos Society of Artists and one of the most accomplished of the group.  In Contemporary Rhthym will present about 60 major painting, as well as illustrations and sketches, is organized by The Albuquerque Museum, the Denver Museum of Art, and the Phoenix Museum of Art.
The story of Ernest Blumenschein begins in 1898 when a fateful painting trip to New Mexico found a young Blumenschein and fellow artist, Bert Phillips, stranded with a broken wagon wheel outside the remote village of Taos.  So impressed were the two by their adventures they made plans to make it home.  While Phillips would return the following year, it would take Blumenschein over twenty years to settle permanently.  In the intervening years an art colony developed and eventually formed into the Taos Society of Artists.

Blumenschein is remembered for his appealing, life-like paintings of New Mexican landscapes and people.  But he was also an artist engaged with current trends. He challenged himself artistically whether it was writing a review of the most important modern exhibition of his time, forming a group of experimental painters, or exhibiting alongside the period’s modern American artists.