The Transcendent Emil Bisttram
1895-1976

By Rebekah Powers | June 2024

Emil Bisttram first visited Taos in 1930 and stayed at Mrs. Martin’s rooming house, which is now the Taos Inn. When they moved to Taos in 1932, he and his wife Mayrion first rented, then bought an adobe on Ledoux Street. To compensate for the lack of a local art market, Bisttram showed his entrepreneurial spirit by launching the Taos School of Art which would last for three decades. It was Bisttram who organized the murals painted in the new county courthouse as part of the “Treasury Relief Art Program”. If that wasn’t enough, Bisttram, Victor Higgins and Andrew Dasburg started the first free standing gallery in Taos on the plaza: Taos Heptagon Gallery.

Mayrion and EJ (as she called him) were kind and gentle people, a fact that might surprise those who knew of his early years on the Lower Eastside of New York when he was a boxer and member of a gang. But Emil Bisttram was destined for greater things and soon he would join other artists in Taos to create a new modern American movement in art. Indeed Bisttram transcended his rough start in life and became integral to the early art scene in Taos.

Chimayo Trading has recently acquired 2 special works by the artist that stretch from one end of the spectrum to the other. A sizable landscape painting of mountains undulates in harmonious greens that glow from the canvas, one of Bisttram’s more realistic landscapes that actually contains a surprise. It is rare, but not unheard of for a gallery to receive a painting that has another image on the back. Usually this is inadvertent and unrelated to the primary image. But this painting by Bisttram is in a sense multi dimensional and spans the seasons. On the back of the green mountain scape, there is a mirrored painting of the same scene and composition, but in winter!

The other end of the spectrum is what have been described as “little gems”, which are the small abstract studies and finished works that he did in the 1930’s and 40’s. These works on paper were encaustic, a technique Bisttram used extensively during this time. When asked the meaning behind his works he would often say, “See what you can make of it!”

His interest in meditation through mandalas, sacred geometry and spiritualism would guide the artist throughout his later life. His subjects became “that which is felt in silence”. Looking through a compendium of his paintings, one can trace his life in creative stages through the titles of his paintings.

Chimayo Trading welcomes you to view the work of visionary Emil Bisttram and transcend the ordinary. Where history meets art, in Ranchos de Taos.

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#1 Saint Francis Church Plaza
Ranchos de Taos, NM 87557

575.758.0504

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