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Illustrated:
Lauren Camp, Turquoise Door: Finding Mabel Dodge Luhan in New Mexico, Poems, Denver, Colorado, 2018

When Emil Bisttram first visited New Mexico in 1930, he was overwhelmed by the seemingly endless scenery, the shocking brightness and the expansive landscape. Having spent the most formative years of his life in New York city, surrounded by bustling people and ever-growing buildings, this hardly seems surprising. He would soon fall in love with the New Mexican landscape, though. With an education that included the National Academy of Art and Design, Cooper’s Union and The Art Student’s League, Bisttram had some of the most important names of the early 20th century art world on his resume. Even with his impressive east coast credentials, though, it was in the American Southwest where he found his renown. 

 

Bisttram had the skills and wherewithal to make a living and earn the respect of the art community of early 20th century New Mexico with his representational art. Still, his true passion was abstract art. Free from the confines of representing the natural world, he employed Dynamic Symmetry and the Golden Ratio to create highly organized, totally unstructured works of abstraction. Bisttram believed that creative endeavors should be life-affirming, and he used color, space and light in his nonobjective art to help stimulate deep thought and induce spiritual epiphanies. 

 

For decades prior to Emil Bisttram’s arrival, New Mexico had attracted some of the Southwest’s most accomplished artists including Joseph Henry Sharp, Eanger Irving Couse, Bert Geer Phillips and Ernest Martin Hennings. There was a reverence for representational, academic art that was felt throughout the New Mexican art scene. Bisttram’s use of a modern, totally nonobjective aesthetic certainly ruffled feathers amongst the academicians and critics. Still, this dramatic, new style brought a fresh and positive impact to the Southwest that can still be felt today.