Ward Lockwood (1894-1963)

Born in Atchison, Kansas, Ward Lockwood became a key painter in the Taos, New Mexico art colony. He studied at the University of Kansas, and from 1914 to 1917 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he was introduced to Modernism. In 1917, he began a two-year enlistment in the Army and served in France, and in 1921, a return visit to France led to his being influenced by Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh.

In 1926, he and his wife, artist Clyde Bonebrake, moved to Taos, New Mexico because of his friendship with Kenneth Adams, who was already established there. Lockwood became interested in the Taos Society of Artists, dedicated to a mutual effort of marketing their artwork. In the 1930s, he left Taos, accepting teaching positions at the Broadmoor Academy in Colorado Springs and in 1938, became Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Texas in Austin.

Subsequently he taught at the University of California at Berkeley and at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. In 1940, he moved to San Francisco and experimented with Abstraction and Assemblage but was again in the Army during World War II, advancing to the rank of colonel.

After that, he returned to California to teach and was much influenced by the modernist art environment there. He made frequent summer trips to Taos, where he settled during his final years. In 1962, Lockwood retired from teaching and returned to Taos where he died the following year.