Kenneth Miller Adams (1897-1966)

Taos realist figure and landscape painter, muralist, lithographer, teacher at 16, Adams studied with G.M. Stone in Topeka, then entered the AIC in 1916. After serving in the Army as a private in World War I, he studied at the ASL beginning 1919, the pupil of K H Miller, Bridgman, Sterne, and Speicher. Summers were with Dasburg in Woodstock. From 1921 to 1923, Adams studied in France and Italy, painting landscapes he exhibited in Topeka. In 1924, Adams followed Dasburg’s advice, settling in Taos with an introduction to Ufer. He became the youngest and last member of the Taos Society of Artists, but he was more than a duplicate of the original members’ emphasis on the romantic Indian. Adams was contemporary realist, influenced by Dasburg and working in the tradition of Rivera and Orozco. Technically conservative, Adams was nevertheless concerned with the daily lives of his agrarian neighbors. In 1929, Adams began teaching at the U of New Mexico in Taos. The dominant subjects in his work became the Spanish Americans and landscapes. In 1938, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his work by 1950 was devoted to nudes, portraits, and still life, while his summer subjects in Taos were flowers, the Indians and the rural Spanish Americans. Resource: SAMUELS’ Encyclopedia of ARTISTS of THE AMERICAN WEST, Peggy and Harold Samuels, 1985, Castle Publishing

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