Emil Bisttram

Biography

Emil Bisttram’s uniquely spiritual approach to non-objective painting makes him one of the most intriguing talents of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by the Dynamic Symmetry theory of his tutor Jay Hambidge, Bisttram believed that creating harmonious compositions was a life-affirming creative activity. In the early 1930s, he moved to Taos, New Mexico where he founded the Transcendental Painting Group in 1938 together with Raymond Jonson. Believing that art should stimulate profound levels of thought and intuition, he began to develop an increasingly non-objective style which drew inspiration from the legends and visual motifs of his environment. Old Taos Church (1955) evokes the local architecture in a calm, meditative style which retains some elements of representation while in Spring Thaw (1959) Bisttram embraces greater levels of ambiguity in order to encourage personal spiritual epiphanies in his viewers.