Earth Forms #643 (c. 1985)
Acrylic on canvas
Cliff Harmon (b. 1923)
Taos
Gift of Cecelia Torres
Capitol Art Collection, Capitol Art Foundation
Cliff Harmon studied at the Bisttram School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles and Taos. In 1948, he and his wife Barbara Sayre, also an artist and a fellow student, moved to Taos where they began to build their adobe home and studios, where they continue to paint. Harmon studied with early Taos Moderns: Emil Bisttram, Louis Ribak, and Joe Fiore. In 1949–50, he and Barbara went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina to explore Bauhaus art and design precepts of Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, and Joseph Albers.
Earth Forms is part of a continuing series of abstract landscapes, modernist in their approach, with contrasting layers and juxtaposing planes of vivid and muted color. Harmon is considered a living master and continues to paint at age ninety. His works are exhibited at the Blumenschein Museum, the Harwood Museum of Art, and the Hulse Warman Gallery; all of Taos, New Mexico.
It continues to be the mission of the Capitol Art Foundation to build a permanent collection of New Mexico masterworks that are representative of New Mexico’s rich and diverse cultural, historical, and artistic traditions.
