The transcendental art of Emil Bisttram

(ART BIOGRAPHY) THE TRANSCENDENTAL ART OF EMIL BISTTRAM
By WALT WIGGINS
Foreword By DAVID WITT
Curator, The Harwood Foundation
96 Pages - 80 Illustrations
50 in Full Color
EMIL JAMES BISTTRAM has been acclaimed as one of the truly important painters to emerge from the Twentieth Century in America. Hungarian-born, he emigrated to America with his parents in 1906 and as a young man became a student of noted teachers such as Leon Kroll, Jay Hambidge, Ivan Olinsky, Howard Giles and Deleftwich Dodge at learning centers such as the National Academy of Design, Parson's School of Art and Design, Cooper Union and the Art Student's League in New York City. Bisttram, himself, was to serve as teacher in fine art at the world-famous Roerich Museum for several years before being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931 to study with the great Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, in Mexico City.

Bisttram and his wife, Mayrion, settled in Taos, New Mexico, in 1932 where they remained the rest of their lives. He became an innovator of modern art in a traditional representationally chaste environment, but survived and prospered, teaching Dynamic Symmetry and color theory at the Bisttram School of Fine Art and all the while, painting a wealth of works strikingly cosmic, spiritual, symphonic and mystical to delight the eyes of all who witness them.The refined maturity of Bisttram's work brought him recognition and honors throughout America, including exhibitions at the Whitney, Guggenheim, Corcoran and Metropolitan. He was an artist, muralist, teacher, lecturer, philosopher, theosophist and civic-servant who won our attention, nationwide, on merit.Illustrated with 50 color reproductions of his work, this book comprises a remarkable document both on the development of one of the most extraordinary painters in American art but of the internal rhythm which influenced and guided his inimitable creative vision.