Anna Katharine Skeele

Painter and muralist Anna Katherine Skeele is best known for her studies of Southwest Native Americans. She began painting the people of the Southwest in 1928, when she first visited Taos, NM and was attracted to their dignity, humor, and simple approach to life. She returned to New Mexico often until 1957, and also went occasionally to Arizona, to paint and sketch the people and landscape in a style that was at first representational and later, around 1948, tended towards the abstract. Both her representational and abstract portraits and figure studies show an intense sensitivity towards her subjects.

Born in Wellington, OH, Skeele studied art at Olivet College in Michigan and then, upon her move to Monrovia, CA in 1912, at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. In 1922 she enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.Further study included time with Stanton Macdonald-Wright in Los Angeles, with Armin Hansen in Monterey, a year in Paris at the Académies Julian and Grand Chaumière, and a year in Florence at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts with Felice Carena. Upon her return to Monrovia, Skeele taught in the local school district and began a productive and long professional career, exhibiting regularly in group and one-person shows until her death in 1963. She and her husband, painter Frode Dann, whom she married in 1946, established the Pasadena School of Fine Arts in 1951. Her works are held in the collections of several California museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Long Beach Museum of Art. She also participated in the PWA project, painting a mural of daily life in Taos at Torrance High School, CA, in 1935. Skeele died in Pasadena, CA after returning from a painting trip to Morocco.

Artist info courtesy of http://www.californiaartauction.com/skeele-anna-katharine