Loren Mozley
Loren Norman Mozley (1905-1989) was born on
October 2, 1905. He moved with his family in 1906 to New Mexico. He was introduced to oil painting by one of his father's
Navajo patients and began to paint at age eleven. In 1926 he moved
to Taos. For the next two years he painted and exhibited his work at
the Harwood Gallery, and befriended artists Andrew Dasburg, Dorothy
Brett, John Ward Lockwood,
Kenneth Adams, and John Marin, among others. From 1929 to 1931
Mozley studied at the Colarossi and Chaumière academies in Paris,
copied paintings at the Louvre, and traveled in Holland, Italy, and
southern France. He returned to America penniless in 1931 and spent
the next four years in New York City, working as an engraver for
part of the time and painting when he could. During this time he
befriended Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keeffe.
In 1935 he returned to Taos, where
he married Wilma Genevieve Meyer on December 15; they had no
children. For the next few years Mozley worked to establish a career
as a painter and teacher. He received WPA commissions to paint
murals for the Federal Building in
Albuquerque and the post office in Clinton, Oklahoma; exhibited his
work as a member of the Taos Heptagon, an artists' gallery group;
and published an article on his friend John Marin in the
Bulletin
of the Museum of Modern Art (1936). In 1936 he began teaching in
the art department at the University of New Mexico, and in the
summers of 1937 and 1938 he served as director of the Field School
of Art at Taos. He also served as a member of the board of the
University of New Mexico Harwood Foundation from 1937 to 1938. He
exhibited his work at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the
Denver Art Museum in 1938.
Mozley left New Mexico in August 1938 to help Ward Lockwood organize
the new art department at the University of Texas in Austin. The two
men put their jobs on the line by insisting on the necessity of nude
models for life-drawing classes and worked to bridge the gap between
academia and the larger arts community by hiring artists as
teachers, bringing art exhibitions to the campus, and serving on
juries throughout the state. During the
next few years Mozley
completed a post office mural in Alvin, Texas, lectured in Texas
museums, and served as acting chairman of the department of art from
1942 to 1945 and as president of the Texas Fine Arts Association
(1945-46). His work was exhibited regionally and began to win
recognition: he received the Cokesbury Prize for an etching entered
in the Dallas Museum Print Show (1943) and won first prize and the
San Antonio Art League prize for paintings entered in Texas General
exhibitions (1942 and 1945).
Loren Mozley painted scenes from the
American Southwest, Mexico, South America, and Spain in a
methodical, geometric style, using a palette dominated by dusky
purples and maroons, brightened with accents of gold, green, olive,
and blue. Oil paints were his primary medium, although he also
experimented with watercolors, lithography, and graphic techniques.
He described himself as a "child of the Cubist order," but the work
of Andrew Dasburg, an influential Taos
painter who applied Cézannesque geometry to his southwestern
landscapes, was a more direct influence on his style. In some of
his most powerful early works Mozley used objects such as roses,
crowns of thorns, and bird nests to embody evocative scenes such as
Tragic Landscape (1944) and
The Hunter (1946). In
Winter Fields (1948). Mozley retired from the University of
Texas with the rank of professor emeritus in 1975. Three years later
his career was commemorated by a retrospective exhibition and
catalogue organized by the University of Texas Art Gallery. Mozley
died on September 21, 1989. His work is in the collection of the
Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery in Austin, the Old
Jail Art Center in Albany, and the Witte Museum in San Antonio.
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Boy Admiring Cliff 1948
Purchased from the
Artists Family

Skull & Horn
Purchased from the Artists Family
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