American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 43

Karl Knaths (American, 1891–1971)

Vertical Composition with White Form in Center, n.d.

Color monotype, 11 3/8 x 9 7/8 in.
Collection of The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York. Gift of
the Baker/Pisano Collection, 2001.9.142

Karl Knaths was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He studied
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in
1916, and briefly in New York at the Art Students League. In
1919, Knaths moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he
exhibited regularly with the Provincetown Art Association, and
lived for the rest of his life. His first one-man exhibition was
held in 1929 at the Phillips Collection (formerly the Phillips
Memorial Gallery), Washington, DC, which holds the largest
collection of his work. Between 1934 and 1935, Knaths was
employed as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist,
and was charged with painting murals. Informed by European
Modernism, Knaths’ work is associated with early American
forms of Cubism, which also inform his monotypes, the earliest
of which date to his arrival in Provincetown.
NOTES:
Morgan, Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists, 263–264.

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