WILLIAM LUMPKINS (1909-2000)

Raised on ranches in New Mexico and Arizona, as a high school student in Roswell Lumpkins became friends with the artist Peter Hurd who coached the artist in his early efforts. In 1930, Lumpkins saw a group of watercolors by John Marin which were being hung for a show in Taos. Shortly after, Lumpkins completed his first abstract

work, a small watercolor called "Dancing Trees.", becoming an early proponent of abstraction. Lumpkins moved to Santa Fe in 1935, where he met Raymond Jonson.and became a founding member of The Transcendentalist Painting Group founded by Jonson and Emil Bisttram. He painted and exhibited throughout the Southwest until 1941 when he joined the Navy. From 1950 to 1967 he lived in La Jolla where he had a successful architectural practice and became involved with the activities of the La Jolla Art Center. During this period he designed the music room addition at the Atheneaum with its striking rotunda, as well as numerous private residences. As an architect he gained international recognition for his adobe designs and use of solar technology but in 1978 closed his firm to concentrate entirely on his artwork.

Untitled, from "Black Folio"

Woodcut on antique white-wove paper, 19-7/8 x 11-1/2", pencil signed, 1961. Framed.

Black Folio, printed by Irwin Hollander in the Spring of 1961, consisted of seven woodcuts by prominent San Diego area artists working at the La Jolla Art Center. An important collective statement from San Diego art's vanguard, the collection contained work by Don Dudley, Fred Holle, Sheldon Kirby, Malcolm McClain, Richard Allen Morris and Guy Williams, as well as the prominent New Mexico artist William Lumpkins who was working as an architect in La Jolla. Publisher Irwin Hollander was a Tamarind trained printer who printed the majority of the important Abstract Expressionist prints of the 1960s, including works by de Kooning, Francis, Guston and Motherwell.