Anna Skeele: California Artist and Modernist of the Southwest

Rancho Church, New Mexico 1930 Oil on canvas

I recently discovered a most interesting California artist by the name of Anna Skeele (1896-1963 Monrovia, CA). Skeele was born in Wellington, Ohio and eventually made her way to New York City to study at the Art Students League of New York City under Charles Hawthorne and Frederic Bridgman.

Skeele, she also travelled to Europe where she became exposed to modernism at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and with André Lhote in Paris. In a mostly male artist dominated feel, she travelled to the Royal Academy of Arts in Florence, Italy where she studied the history of painting.

Skeele eventually made her way west, moving to California in 1912. Here she took art classes at the California School of Fine Arts under the apprenticeship of Armin Hansen in Monterey, California. Skeele eventually began teaching at Pomona College. Also know as Katherine Skeele Dann, she married fellow artist Frode Dann.

The mid-century in Southern California produced a vibrant school of modern artists like Skeele. Because of the number of imporant art school in the area -- artists were able to innovate modern art techiniques and styles unlike anywhere else in America. Artists like Anna Katharine Skeele, Helen Lundeberg, Henrietta Shore, Henry Lee McFee, Richard Haines, among others developed a distinctive figurative modernist school of painting.

Skeele favored figurative art but painted in a modern style in which she utilized a vibrant Fauvist palette, cubist forms, flattened panes of color. Reminiscent of artist peers of her time period Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton, and Georgia O'Keeffe -- Skeele developed a similar but signature style unique to her

Anna Skeele spent quite a bit of time in the Southwest -- and she became fascinated by the people and place. Some of her most striking paintings often depict Native Americans in and around New Mexico.

Image: Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum. Anna Skeele "Rancho Church, New Mexico" depicts San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Rancho de Taos, built between 1772 and 1816 by Franciscan fathers. It was a favorite subject for artists who came to the area, among them Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keeffe. Skeele emphasizes the massiveness of the structure, which fills the composition and dwarfs the figures nearby. The fluffy white clouds form a halo around the church.