Thomas Benrimo (1887-1958)

Born in San Francisco in 1887, Thomas Benrimo began to draw at a young age, but the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed his early drawings and notebooks and forced the family to move to New York.

Despite suffering from tuberculosis, Benrimo recovered and became a successful stage designer and commercial artist in New York. He painted seriously whenever he could, but only a few of the Cubist paintings of this early period survive. Benrimo taught at Pratt Institute and was one of the first in this country to introduce the teaching methods developed at the German Bauhaus School of design.

Benrimo moved to Taos, New Mexico, in 1939, and was able at last to paint full-time. His work evolved through periods of Cubism and Surrealism and pure abstraction, often showing influences of antiquity, traditional painting and architecture.