Lawrence Calcagno was born in San Francisco in 1913 and grew up on his father's ranch near Big Sur in a remote part of California. During his formative years he was isolated from society and the conventional experiences that mold the values and images of an individual's world.

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A Navy veteran from World War II, Louis Catusco used his GI Bill benefits to study art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in the 1940's. Of all the mystics, poets, eccentrics and visionaries among the Taos Moderns, Louis is the most enigmatic. In 1950 he came to Taos to work with Louis Ribak at the Taos Valley Art School, settling here permanently in 1963. After winning many awards, both local and state, Louis dropped out of the Taos art scene to continue his work in solitude.

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John is a third-generation New Mexican. His grandfather, Chester De Puy, came to the Southwest in the 1880s and ran a grain mill in Mora, New Mexico. John’s parents moved east during the early years of the Great Depression, and John was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1927. The family soon returned to New Mexico, where Taos, with its surrounding area, became the home that John would always return to; it is where he lives today. Biography from the Archives of Galerie De Puy

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Raymond Jonson is best known as the co-founder of the Transcendental Painters Group that was formed in Taos in 1938. Jonson settled in New Mexico in 1924 to paint the landscape. Prior to this move, he lived in Chicago and studied with his mentor B.J.O. Nordfeldt at the Chicago Art Institute. The Armory Show Exhibition of 1913, traveled to Chicago and changed Jonson’s life. This show gave him the opportunity to view fist hand the work of Cezanne and Picabia. The free form of nature in stylized forms and shapes they used in their artistry broke open his view on to capture the rugged landscape of New Mexico.

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Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Jan Matulka became a leading modernist working with Stuart Davis to find a new type of Cubism based on distortion of forms. The totality of his work ranged from traditional to abstract, reflecting the changes in the art world of 20th century America. Biography from the Archives of askART

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Biography from the Archives of askART Florence Miller Pierce was known for thought provoking abstract, non-objective, monochromatic painting rooted in her dedication to Zen Buddhism and meditation. Many of her works give the appearance of floating off the wall, something she achieved with richly colored and textured geometric shapes---polygons, triangles, and rectangles---encased in divided layers of transparent resin over colors that had been softened through mixing with with milled fiberglass. Working with resin to create textures occurred for her in 1969 when she 51 years old and was in her New Mexico studio making foam sculpture. A chance spill of resin landed on a piece of aluminum foil, and when it hardened, it 'shimmered', and she was fascinated. Learning that she could create an interesting effect with resin adhering to mirrored tiles, "she would continue with the new body of work for nearly 35 years." (Regan)

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