Joseph Fleck

Joseph Fleck (1892 - 1977)
Born in Austria, Joseph Fleck studied at Vienna's Royal Academy of Arts until 1920, when he decided to leave bleak post-war Austria for America. After working as a favorite portrait painter among the wealthy of Kansas City, Fleck headed to Taos, drawn by the romance of the West. There, he counted Ernest Blumenschein and Oscar Berninghaus among his close friends. Soon, Fleck's portraits of Indian people and landscapes appeared in exhibitions at the Chicago Art Institute and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. There is an unparalleled sense of poetry within color and form that infuses the work of Joseph Fleck. His loose yet elegant style reflects a rigorous Viennese art education played out on a raw American landscape.