Kenneth M. Adams

born Topeka, Kansas, 1897; died Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1966

BiographyA native of Topeka, Kansas, Kenneth Adams received formal training at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, but the course of his career was not defined until he attended the Art Students League’s summer session in Woodstock, New York, in 1919. There he studied under Andrew Dasburg, who became a major influence on Adams’s career, advising him first to travel and study in Europe and then inviting him to Taos in 1924. He established a studio in Taos and began producing abstracted images of northern New Mexico in a style reminiscent of post-impressionism. In 1926 he became the last member elected to the Taos Society of Artists before it was disbanded in 1927. In the 1930s Adams completed several large murals throughout the Southwest before becoming an art instructor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1937. He went on to teach at the University until he retired in 1963, producing work that most often depicted life in New Mexico.

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