The Wheat Field is an etching created in 1943 by American artist Gene Kloss. The reference for this work is Sanchez / Kloss 385. It is pencil signed and titled and was printed by the artist on ivory wove paper. This etching was published by the artist in an edition of 75 and the platemark measures 7-3/4 x 10-7/8 inches.
According to the article “Bread Basket of El Norte” in Taos News on 14 January 2022, “In the 1940s Taoseños were still producing about 75 percent of what they consumed, but the drought and the changing economy of the 1950s death a death knell to subsistence farming in the Taos County. Subsistence farming did not disappear instantly … but after the middle of the twentieth century, very few families were able to raise and feed a family solely through subsistence farming.”
Gene Kloss noted about another print entitled New Mexico Harvest: “And the real economic wealth of America was and is the harvesting of crops. The Indians harvested corn, beans, squash, yucca pods for sugar, wild plums for fruit, plenty of wild game for meat. Today in northern New Mexico, the crops are winter wheat, corn, pinto beans, red potatoes, chili, apples, livestock, alfalfa….Before the advent of mowing machines and combines, wheat was cut by sickle, the sheaves taken to a goat or horse corral and threshed by the trample of feet, winnowed by tossing the grain from wide baskets in the breezy air.”
Gene Kloss, painter and printmaker, was born Alice Geneva Glasier on 27 July 1903 in Oakland, California. She graduated with honors from the University of California Berkeley in 1924. During her last semester at the University of California Berkeley, Kloss participated in seminar given by Perham Nahl and with his encouragement she made her first etching. She further her studies for another two years attending classes at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California.
In 1925, she wed the poet Phillips Kloss and they visited Taos, New Mexico for the first time. Also, this year, she stopped using her first name, shortened her middle name to Gene, and used her husband’s surname. In de-feminizing her name, Gene Kloss’ work was selected for exhibitions without the prejudicial, sexist discrimination encountered by women in all fields.
Gene and Phillips divided their year between Berkeley, California and Taos, New Mexico until they settled permanently in Taos in 1953. During the Depression Kloss made prints for the PWAP and WPA/FAP in New Mexico but during the World War II the Klosses spent most of their time in Berkeley, where Phillips worked in a shipyard. After the war, they began building their home near Taos, New Mexico.
Kloss was a member of and exhibited with the Society of American Etchers, the Chicago Society of Etchers, the California Society of Etchers, the Carmel Art Association, the Prairie Print Makers, the New Mexico Art League, and the Philadelphia Watercolor Club. In 1950, Gene was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design and, in 1972, she was elevated to a National Academician.
Gene Kloss received numerous honors for her prints and repositories of her work include the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; the Denver Art Museum, Colorado; the Oakland Museum of California; the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museums of Fine Arts, California; the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; and the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Gene Kloss died in Taos, New Mexico on 24 June 1996.
