Roger Edward Kuntz

Roger Edward Kuntz (1926 - 1975) was an American landscape painter and a member of the Claremont Group of painters - professors and graduates of Pomona College, Scripps College, and the Claremont Graduate School. [Steen, K.E. "Crystal Cove Cottages: Islands in Time on the California Coast"]

Life and Work

Roger Kuntz was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1926. He attended Pomona College, Claremont, California, where he obtained his BA degree in 1948. [University of Illinois, College of Fine and Applied Arts 1963 "Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture"] Kuntz lived in Laguna Beach, California from 1964.

By about 1950 Kuntz believed that post-war abstract expressionism had run its course and that the time was ripe for the reappearance of structure in art that communicated to the viewer. Kuntz embarked on several painting series, culminating in the nationally acclaimed Freeway series. [http://lagunaartmuseum.org/upcoming-exhibitions.html Laguna Art Museum - Upcoming Exhibitions - Upcoming Exhibitions - be sure not to miss them!! ] ]

These bare geometric paintings dated 1959 to 1962 of concrete canyons, underpasses, ramps, pedestrian spirals, tunnels, and signs carved in deep shadow and light, embodied Kuntz’s search for the union of formal abstraction and mundane reality. This stylistic shift away from gestural abstraction was in sync with the times and Kuntz was included in the first national survey of Pop Art organized by John Coplans, editor of Artforum magazine, in 1963.

In 1962 Life magazine did a special issue on the state of California, it focused on five artists: Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John McLaughlin, Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston, and Roger Kuntz.

Laguna Art Museum, California is currently organising a major retrospective on the work of Roger Kunst which will run from March 8th to May 24th, 2009. The exhibition is titled "The Shadow Between Representation and Abstraction", and will be the first major showing of the artist’s work since his death. It will focus on Kuntz’s search for what he called the “middle ground” between figurative and non-figurative painting, and explore his role in the Southern California art scene of the 1950s and 1960s.

Roger Kuntz died in 1975 at the age of 49.

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