Frank Stella, "Agua Caliente"

FRANK STELLA

Agua Caliente
Print, Silkscreen, 1972

Frank Stella is one of America’s leading contemporary artists. He was a pioneer of the Minimalist art movement of the 1960s, a type of art that stressed the reduction of the image to its most basic elements of color, shape, and design. Minimalists strove to create artwork that was devoid of symbolism, representation, or opinion. Stella is famous for saying “What you see is what you get”. In the 1970s he deviated from Minimalist designs to incorporate sculpture as a third dimension in his work. By the 1990s he had progressed toward more complex imagery, creating elaborate, vivid works that paid homage to his extensive cultural and literary knowledge.. Stella’s abstract prints in lithography, screen printing, etching, and offset lithography ( a technique he introduced) have had a strong impact on printmaking as art.

Frank Stella was born in Malden, Mass, in 1936. He studied painting at the Phillips Academy in Andover and later at Princeton University. He moved to New York City in 1958 and has spent most of his life living and working in the city, though his art projects have taken him around the globe. He has done large scale outdoor sculpture, mural projects, and has done architectural designs for pavilions and museums. He did set design for dancer Merce Cunningham for the musical Pajama Game. He is a printmaker of the subjects and styles of his paintings. His series called “Indian Bird” is derived from one of his favorite pastimes, bird watching. He has won numerous awards, grants, and honors and has taught and lectured at universities and museums in America and abroad. Never one to rest on his laurels, Frank Stella is constantly evolving, changing, and responding to the world around him.

This biographical information is from several internet sites including AskART, Art Cellar Exchange, MetroArtWork, Hollis Taggart Galleries and Answers.com.

Submitted by Lois Smalley

Hans Meyer-Kassel, "Nevada Landscape"

HANS MEYER-KASSEL

Nevada Landscape
Oil on canvas, 1945

From the Nevada Historical Quarterly, by Jeff Nicholson:

"Hans Meyer-Kassel, a native of Germany, arrived in Nevada in 1937 at the age of 65. Prior to his moving to Nevada, he had enjoyed success and honors as an artist in Germany and had exhibited throughout Europe. Born Hans Meyer in 1872, he studied art at the University of Munich, choosing portraiture as his field of art. At the age of nineteen he was already welcoming clients to his first professional studio and received many important commissions in the years following. He became a professor at Germany’s Royal Academy of Art and was a founding member of the International Art Society of Munich. In recognition of his early achievements, his native city, following longstanding tradition, bestowed upon him the high honor of adding its name, Kassel, to his."

"A classically trained and accomplished painter, Meyer-Kassel produced a steady stream of landscapes, still lifes, nautical scenes, and portraits. In Nevada he had studios in Genoa, Reno, and Carson City. During the 1940s he did portraits of four of Nevada’s past governors as well as several Nevada dignitaries. Working in oils, pastels and tempera, he was a prolific artist and many of his works are in public and private collections throughout Nevada. Hans Meyer-Kassel maintained his vigorous painting until the last day of his life in 1952, when he simply laid down his brushes for an afternoon nap and never awoke."

Robert Swain Gifford, "Landscape with Cattle"

ROBERT SWAIN GIFFORD

Landscape with Cattle
Etching, 1888

Robert Swain Gifford was born in 1840 on Naushon Island, Massachusetts. He studied art with a Dutch artist, Albert Van Beest, in Bedford. In the early 1860s he had studios in New York and Massachusetts. By 1866 he had made New York City his permanent home, although he returned regularly to Massachusetts and other parts of New England to sketch and paint. In 1869 he traveled and sketched extensively in the Western States. In 1870 he began a series of trips to Europe and the Middle East. He was especially taken with the work of the Barbizon artists, especially those whose work he saw on a trip to Marseilles. Peter Bermingham in American Art in the Barbizon Mood, (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975) notes the change in Gifford’s style as a result of that exposure to the different palettes of some European artists: “...after that his style evolved from an overblown romanticism,....to stark, simpler compositions, wide spacious vistas, and, most typically, a cold, somber mood drawn from the barren dunes and rugged cedars of the New England coast.”

In 1877 Gifford began teaching at Cooper Union School in New York City. He remained there for thirty years, the last nine years as director. He helped establish the New York Etching Club in 1877 and was a founding member of the American Society of Painters in Watercolors. He won medals at Expositions in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Charleston, and Paris. He was a friend of Thomas and Mary Moran, both accomplished etchers. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He died in New York City in 1905.

-- Kathleen Durham

Harold Joe Waldrum, "Morning Light"

HAROLD JOE WALDRUM

Morning Light
Aquatint etching, 1991

Joe Waldrum is best known for his paintings, aquatint etchings, and linocuts of the adobe churches and mud-hewn moradas of New Mexico. His color-saturated paintings have minimal lines, but he has mastered the use of light and shadow to portray these sacred places. For several years Waldrum made his “window series:, which were works with the “painting as a window” type of composition. Just as Matisse, Magritte, and other artists have been drawn to that format, so was Waldrum. The churches of New Mexico proved to be a passionate subject for him as he depicted the spiritual and mysterious aspects of these earthy structures in his works.

Harold Joe Waldrum was born in Savoy, Texas on August 23, 1934. He earned a college degree in music from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, and a master’s degree in studio painting from Fort Hays State College in Kansas. Waldrum taught art and music in the public schools of Kansas for sixteen years. In 1970 he moved to the hill country of Texas and then in 1971 to Santa Fe, New Mexico. After he killed a man during a break-in in his studio, Waldrum moved to New York for a time to escape the man’s angry relatives. By 1979 he had returned to New Mexico and began painting the churches. He lived on a remote ranch and raised mules. In 1994 Waldrum had a book published with provocative essays, photographs of his “Mountain Ranch” mules, and color reproductions of his work. Joe Waldrum died in 2003 in his beloved New Mexico.

Quotes from the artist:
“There is a beautiful place in the United States of America. It is in northern New Mexico between the two mountain ranges. This place is called “The Cradle”. Its people, the land, and its elements are special and peculiar. I find the genius of this place reflected in the churches”.

“When my analyst in New York identified me as socially schizophrenic, I felt better knowing that my malady had a name; and when I first saw the mountain range of the thieves...I felt better knowing there was a place for the socially schizophrenic to live.”

This information compiled from articles from Artspace Quarterly, the online gallery of Rio Bravo Fine Arts, and the online archives of AskART.

-- Lois Smalley

Harold Lukens Doolittle, Morning in Yosemite

HAROLD LUKENS DOOLITTLE

Morning in Yosemite
Aquatint (no date)

Harold Doolittle (1883-1974) was an etcher, furniture maker, and civil engineer from Southern California. Though he worked in all the graphic processes including photography and collotype, he is most known for his beautiful aquatints. Doolittle was an inventive man who built his own press and mezzotint rocker, and preferred to make his own linen paper.

Doolittle was born in Pasadena and studied at Cornell University and Throop Polytechnic Institute, now known as Caltech. He worked for many years as chief design engineer for the Southern California Edison Company.

He served as President of the California Print Makers in the 1940s and 1950s. Other memberships that he held included Pasadena Society of Artists, Society of American Graphic Artists, and several chapters of the Society of Etchers. Doolittle is represented in the Library of Congress, California State Library, and public libraries of the cities of New York and Los Angeles.

This biographical info provided online by two galleries representing Doolittle’s works: The Blue Heron Gallery and the Annex Galleries.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

William Dassonville, Yosemite Valley

WILLIAM DASSONVILLE

Yosemite Valley
Photograph, Platinum Print, 1906

The following is from the book Dassonville, with a biographical essay by Peter Palmquist.

William Dassonville’s photographic legacy is considerable, including an outstanding body of fine photographs in the pictorialist tradition. During his lifetime his photographs were widely published and he won numerous prizes and honors. He was an innovative craftsman and self-taught chemist, a perfectionist who developed and marketed his own line of photgraphic printing paper: Charcoal Black.

Born in Sacramento, CA, in 1879, William Dassonville was given a camera as a youth and made photos of his friends and relatives. In 1900 he opened a portrait studio in San Francisco, and about that time he joined the California Camera Club. In addition to portraits he did landscapes and seascapes. His favorite areas to photograph included Yosemite, the High Sierra, the Pacific Coast around Monterey and Carmel, and Marin County north of San Francisco. Dassonville exhibited at the San Francisco Photography Salons of 1901, 1902, and 1903. His works traveled the nation with the American Photography Salon. In 1906 the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed his studio and all negatives of his pre-1906 work were lost, but he continued to exhibit his photographs. By 1910 his portrait business had grown and he had many customers of significant financial means. When World War I caused a critical shortage of platinum printing papers which Dassonville’s work depended on, he began to experiment with a silver bromide emulsion to coat high quality paper. This led to his Charcoal Black paper and in 1924 he sold his portrait studio to concentrate on the manufacture and marketing of Charcoal Black. He had good success with this as it was popular with photographers such as Ansel Adams. In 1941, at age 62, Dassonville sold the business. He continued to be active in photography, and worked as a medical photographer at Stanford University’s Hospital in San Francisco. William Dassonville died July 15, 1957, in San Francisco.

-- Lois Smalley

Jeff Nicholson, Sunset Down South

JEFF NICHOLSON

July Down South
Oil on canvas, 1979

Jeff Nicholson has been painting landscapes for 35 years, working primarily in oil and watercolor, making art that captures the beauty of Nevada and the Great Basin. He has been described as the “consummate Nevada realist painter”, and his works are in several permanent collections, including the Nevada Museum of Art, the University of Nevada Reno, and the Governor’s Mansion in Carson City.

Nicholson was born in 1947 in Arcata, moved to Reno in 1962, and graduated from Reno High School in 1966. He attended the University of Nevada Reno, completing his studies there in 1978. Nicholson has been involved in art-related employment for many years; he served as a draughtsman in the U.S. Army in the Panama Canal Zone (1967-68), and has worked as a commercial silkscreener and layout artist. He has taught art at Truckee Meadows College and is founder and co-owner of Great Basin Gallery in Carson City. Over the years his art has been exhibited at several Reno and Carson City galleries, and the Nevada Museum of Art has twice honored him with one-man shows. Nicholson states the inspiration for his art is drawn from noted artists Maynard Dixon, Robert Caples, and Craig Sheppard.

Quote from the Artist (from the late 1970s):

“I’d like to pay tribute to Maynard Dixon, whose works I have studied so intensely. One day I hope it can be said that I accomplished as much in capturing that mystical, spiritual quality of the high desert as he did.”

Biographical information from Scenic Nevada.org and Renown Health Center Online Art Gallery.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Frank de Haven, Sunset Landscape

FRANK DE HAVEN

Sunset Landscape
Oil on canvas, 1910

Frank DeHaven was born in Bluffton, Indiana (date unknown). He came to New York in 1886 and studied with George Henry Smillie. He was one of several artists who painted shoreline scenes on Long Island and in Massachusetts. In his father’s obituary in 1915 there were flowery descriptions of the rest of the family. Frank DeHaven was described as “the well-known landscape painter of New York City”. In another amazing passage the unknown author states: “It is not surprising to find latter-day Hudson River School influences, and an intense Barbizon, or more specifically, Tonalist sensibility in much of DeHaven’s work.” DeHaven was also known as an accomplished violin maker. He and his wife traveled extensively through the United States always searching for new places to paint.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Edwin M. Dawes, Fields of May

EDWIN M. DAWES
1872-1945

Fields of May
Oil on canvas, ca. 1915

Edwin Dawes was born in Boone, Iowa in 1872. He studied art in Pennsylvania with William Lathrop and the New Hope school of American Barbizon painters. He supported himself as a sign painter in Minneapolis for several years, but continued to paint and study art in his spare time. He exhibited with the Minneapolis Artists’ League and his work was shown at the 1913 Chicago Art Institute show.

In 1914 Dawes moved West, traveling and painting in Montana, Arizona, Missouri and Nevada. He worked for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, painting the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park. He settled in California in 1915, but left frequently to explore mining possibilities in gold and silver. He lived for a time in Fallon and in Reno. Dawes died in Los Angeles in 1945.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Suzanne Kanatsiz, Ceremonial Cloak II

SUZANNE KANATSIZ

Ceremonial Cloak II
Mixed Media, 1994

Suzanne Kanatsiz works in sculpture, installation, and drawing. Her forms are wide-ranging; relief panels, earthworks, steel sculptures, and more. Her experimental and conceptual work makes use of diverse combinations of organic and manufactured/machined materials. Many of these works have primitive features, and are created via slow, laborious processes. Concentric rings, circles, and spheres done in repetition are prominent in her designs. Ceremonial Cloak is an example of that type of work. The principal material of the cloak is from pine cones, which were an important part of the Washoe Paiute Indian culture, and the pattern of the piece is repetitive and concentric. It was made during a time when Kanatsiz was living in Nevada.

Born in Detroit, Suzanne Kanatsiz grew up in San Diego and earned a BFA in painting from San Diego State University on 1984 and an MFA in sculpture from San Jose State University in 1988. Arabic text has long been a part of her work due to her Turkish heritage; Kanatsiz is one of two daughters born to an American mother and a Turkish father. She has lived and traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, including a teaching appointment at Sabanci University in Istanbul. She has also traveled to Australia, Canada, Mexico, Scotland, Korea, and other places in order to observe/learn the culture of the native peoples of the region and incorporate that into her artwork. She has taught sculpture at the University of Nevada Reno and at Weber State University in Utah. She currently lives in Ogden with her husband and son.

Quotes from an interview by a writer and friend of hers, Jordan Clary:

Question by Clary: “A lot of your art seems to be inspired by tribal societies. What is it about that that you try to convey with your work?”

Kanatsiz: “Indigenous peoples had a highly sophisticated relationship to the arts and its transformative powers. I am interested in imbuing that power in my work. Also different landscapes reflect my inner landscape. I love the ancient feel of a dry desert, the expansiveness of that is powerful.”

Information from “A” Gallery of Salt Lake City, The Utah Artists Project, and artist-at-large.com interview, 2007.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Mildred Bryan Brooks, Twilight

MILDRED BRYAN BROOKS
1901-1995

Twilight
Etching, 20th Century

Mildred Brooks was born in Missouri and came with her family to Long Beach, California in 1907 when she was six years old. She graduated with honors from USC. She went on to study at Otis and Chouinard Art Institutes. Her teachers/mentors were Tolles Chamberlin (also in this show), and Arthur Millier, who steered her toward printmaking, with an emphasis on etching. She began her career designing Christmas cards but soon acquired her own printing press and began working on her own. She taught at Stickley Art School in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Art Institute, and Pomona College. Her work won awards nationally, including one from the Chicago Society of Etchers – their first ever awarded to a woman or a Westerner! During the Depression she was able to support her family completely with her printmaking. She is best known for her etchings of trees.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

William Franklin Jackson, Untitled (Landscape)

WILLIAM FRANKLIN JACKSON
1850-1936

Untitled (landscape)
Oil on linen, 1920-late 1930s

William Jackson was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. His family came to Sacramento by covered wagon in 1863. He went to San Francisco to study art at the San Francisco School of Design with Virgil Williams and Benoni Irwin. He kept a studio in San Francisco until 1880 when he moved back permanently to Sacramento.

Jackson was a plein air painter known for depicting rolling hills, spring wildflowers and vistas of the American River and Donner Lake. He was a close friend of the painter William Keith. He won gold medals wherever his work was shown.

Jackson is perhaps best known for his role at the Crocker Art Museum. When the Crocker family deeded their art gallery/home to the City of Sacramento in 1884, Jackson became curator and director of the art school. He worked there for fifty-two years, until his death in 1936.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Trude Hanscom, "The Tempest"

TRUDE HANSCOM

The Tempest
Drypoint, 1952

Trude Hanscom was known primarily as a graphic artist who practiced her art in California. She was born Gertrude Fandrich in Oil City, PA on December 6, 1890.
She grew up in Waterloo, NY, and studied art at Syracuse University. About 1930 she moved to California, where she married Charles Hanscom. Her etchings, aquatints, and drypoints depict southern California landscapes. She did a series of works on Los Angeles’ Chinatown, and drew portraits and Indian genre scenes during trips to New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. She sketched Mexican children on frequent visits there. Trude Hanscom studied art at many schools in California, including Scripps College, Claremont, Otis Art Institute, and several universities in the Los Angeles area. While working on her own art, Hanscom taught art to private students and in the public schools of Alhambra, Glendale and San Gabriel. She exhibited works in galleries and shows including the Golden Gate International Exposition, Society of American Etchers in New York, the Royal Academy in London, and various art venues in California. In 1965 she received an honorary life membership in the Society of American Graphic Artists. Trude Hanscom died in a Santa Barbara retirement home on June 7, 1975.

Biographical information is from AskART and The Annex Galleries, online.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Mary Frances Wildman, "Sierra Juniper"

MARY FRANCES WILDMAN
1899-1967

Sierra Juniper
Etching, 1937

Mary F. Wildman was born October 10, 1899, in Indianapolis. She lived in Philadelphia and then moved to Los Angeles to study art at Otis Art Institute. In the 1930s she moved to Palo Alto and earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She was active as an artist in California, and her etching subjects were of the High Sierra, Fallen Leaf Lake, and landscapes around the Stanford area. Wildman exhibited at galleries in San Francisco and Los Angeles and held memberships in several artists’ clubs, including the Palo Alto Art Club, Society of Etchers, and Philadelphia Print Club. She died on the Monterey peninsula on April 27, 1967.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Ruth Doris Swett, "Carolina Long Leafed Pines"

RUTH DORIS SWETT

Carolina Long Leafed Pines
Drypoint, 1938

Ruth Doris Swett was an artist who was active during the 1930s making drypoint and etchings. She was a native of Southern Pines, North Carolina, and much of her work involved the pine needle motif. In December 1941 the local newspaper of Southern Pines, The Pilot, reported that its new nameplate was designed by Ruth Doris Swett from her original drawing of pine needles, a compass, and a map of Moore County.

Not much is know about Swett but Who Was Who in American Art, by Peter Hastings Falk, lists her as an etcher born in 1901 in North Carolina and notes that she had studied at Chouinard Art Institute in California. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalogue has three prints by Swett: Florida Pine, The Lone Palm, and Long Leaf Pine, all of which were done in the 1930s.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

F. Tolles Chamberlin, "Near Pasadena"

F. TOLLES CHAMBERLIN
1873-1961

Near Pasadena
Drypoint, 1947

Tolles Chamberlin was born in San Francisco but spent much of his youth in Vermont and Connecticut. His first art lessons were with Dwight Tryon at the Wadsworth Atheneum. In New Rochelle he became proficient at watercolor renderings for a landscape architect. He continued this work in New York City and attended night classes at the Art Students League. He won a four year scholarship to study in Rome. On his return to New York he taught for several years at the Beaux Arts School of Design.

In 1919 Tolles and his family moved to Pasadena. He taught at the Otis Art Institute and later co-founded the Chouinard Art Institute. He also taught watercolor rendering at the USC School of Architecture. He worked in pastels, oil, watercolor, sculpture, drawing and etching. He may be best known, however, as an extremely gifted and influential teacher. (One of his pupils is Mildred Brooks, also in this show). Tolles died in Los Angeles in 1961.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Arthur A. Hoeber, "Early Evening"

ARTHUR A. HOEBER
1854-1950

Early Evening
Oil on linen, 1910

Arthur Hoeber was born in 1854 in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League under Beckwith. Later he went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under Gerome. His work was so highly thought of in Paris that he was juried into the 1882 Salon. His favorite subjects were tidal wetlands in Cape Cod, New Jersey , and Long Island. He belonged to the New Jersey art colony in Nutley. He is generally considered a Tonalist.

Hoeber is best known as a writer. He was art critic for the New York Times and the New York Globe and wrote several books. He died in Nutley, NJ in 1950.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Alfred Heber Hutty, "An Avenue of Oaks"

ALFRED HEBER HUTTY
1877(8)-1954(8)

An Avenue of Oaks
Etching, 20th Century

Alfred Hutty was born and educated in Michigan, but he spent his adult life going between Woodstock, NY and Charleston, S.C. He moved to New York to work as a stained glass window designer for Tiffany Glass studios. He studied painting at the Art Students League with L. Birge Harrison (represented in our Wiegand collection), and soon became deeply involved with the Woodstock art colony. He and his wife moved to Charleston in 1919, and it was there that he became enthralled with etching. He set up a print studio there and went on to win nationwide awards for his etching. He was the first American to be elected to the British Society of Graphic Arts, and was a founding member of the Charleston Etchers Club. In Art and Artists of the South Boyd Sanders wrote “Hutty adapted readily to his new mode of expression...the rapid certainty of his bitten lines and the rich bloom and shimmer of his drypoints authoritatively declare his mastery of the medium.” He continued to work in oils and mural painting in addition to his etchings. Hutty returned to his home in Woodstock every summer until his death in the 1950s.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Arthur Merton Hazard, Untitled (Mt. Whitney)

ARTHUR MERTON HAZARD
1872-1930

Untitled (Mt. Whitney)
Oil on canvas, 1927

Arthur Hazard was born in Bridgewater, Mass. He studied in Boston, Cincinnati, and Paris, with Frank Duveneck, the tonalist Joseph deCamp, and Henri Blanc. He spent most of his life in Boston where he was known for his superb portraits of Boston socialites and dignitaries., as well as his World War I paintings. Late in life he moved to California for his health. In Hollywood he continued to do portraits. But California also provided him with a new landscape, and he delighted in painting desert flowers and landscapes. His work is represented in the National American Art Museum, the Amon Carter, the Red Cross Museum, the California Historical Society and the Nevada Museum of Art.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

William S. Rice, "California Live Oak"

WILLIAM S. RICE
1873-1963

California Live Oak
Etching, undated

William Rice was born in Pennsylvania and studied at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. In 1900 he moved to California and became Supervisor of Art in the Public Schools. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1910, where he taught high school and college level art courses for thirty-six years. He was a talented artist in the Craftsman tradition, working in watercolor and oil, ceramics, copper and wood, but printmaking was his special skill. He mastered all its forms, and was best known for colored woodcuts (influenced by Japanese prints), and drypoints. He wrote three books on printmaking, and his work was exhibited widely, including a one-man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Rice’s art work is represented in the National American Art Museum and the Library of Congress.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Carl Henrik Jonnevold

CARL HENRIK JONNEVOLD
1856-1955

Untitled (landscape)
Oil on canvas, undated

Carl Jonnevold was born in Norway and came to the United States in his twenties. He painted all around the Northwest until 1887 when he settled in San Francisco. He had no formal art education. In his early fifties he visited Paris where he was drawn to the Barbizon painters’ subdued palettes. His California landscapes from that time on showed this influence. His preference was to paint in late afternoon for the subtle effect of the shadows.
By 1930 he was in deep financial trouble. After a violent dispute with his landlord which resulted in a two month jail sentence, he disappeared from San Francisco. He lived in obscurity for the next twenty-five years. He died at the age of ninety-nine.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Wim Wenders, "Meteorite Crater, West Australia"

Meteorite Crater, West Australia
Large Scale Aerial Photograph, 1988

Wim Wenders is known internationally as a film maker from Germany. By way of scouting via small aircraft for movie set locations for his films, his photographs of these sites eventually led to museum exhibits of his very large scale (typically over fifteen feet in length) aerial photography. A major photographic survey of his “Pictures from the Surface of the Earth” has toured museums world wide since 2001. Meteorite Crater was shot in West Australia on just such a scouting expedition. Difficult to reach by car, Meteorite Crater was on a map of Australia in a remote area west of Alice Springs. Wenders discovered the place on an aerial location survey, circled the enormous crater, landed on the dust strip next to it, and walked for an hour to get into the middle of the giant circle. Wenders claimed the aerial photograph documented the site as a meteorite crater. However, controversy surrounded the artist’s naming of the site. Apparently, the crater wasn’t created by a meteorite: it’s a naturally occurring bowl-shaped depression of land in the earth.

Ernst Wilhelm Wenders was born in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1945. Wenders studied medicine (1963-64), and philosophy (1964-65), before interrupting his academic studies to became a painter in 1966. By 1967 he was working as a film critic and producing several short films, and this continued until the 1980s. In 19882 he moved to New York and has since then become involved in producing and directly hundreds of films through various cinema companies. Two of his best known films are Wings of Desire and The Buena Vista Social Club. He currently lives in Los Angeles and Berlin with his wife, Donata, a photographer.

Quote by the artist: (from Wenders’ official website)
“Bigger is never better per se, nor more beautiful. But some of these landscapes and places that I photographed deserved nothing else but the biggest possible prints. I was limited by the size of the photo paper, otherwise, I would have gone even bigger. To understand these places, you have to immerse yourself in them.”

--Lois Smalley