Roger Edward Kuntz (1926–1975) was an American landscape painter and a member of the Claremont Group of painters - professors and graduates of Pomona College, Scripps College, and the Claremont Graduate School.[1]
Roger Kuntz was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1926. He attended Pomona College, Claremont, California, where he obtained his BA degree in 1948.[2] Kuntz lived in Laguna Beach, California from 1964.
By about 1950 Kuntz believed that post-war abstract expressionism had run its course and that the time was ripe for the reappearance of structure in art that communicated to the viewer. Kuntz embarked on several painting series, culminating in the nationally acclaimed Freeway series.[3]
These bare geometric paintings, dated from 1959 to 1962, centered on urban structures such as concrete canyons, underpasses, ramps, pedestrian spirals, tunnels, and signs carved in deep shadow and light; they embodied Kuntz’s search for the union of formal abstraction and mundane reality. This stylistic shift away from gestural abstraction was in sync with the times and Kuntz was included in the first national survey of Pop Art organized by John Coplans, editor of Artforum magazine, in 1963.[3]
In 1962 Life magazine did a special issue on the state of California; it focused on five artists: Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John McLaughlin, Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston, and Roger Kuntz.[3]
Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California, organized a major retrospective on the work of Roger Kuntz, which ran from March 8 to May 24, 2009. The exhibition, titled "The Shadow Between Representation and Abstraction," was the first major showing of the artist’s work since his death. It focused on Kuntz’s search for what he called the "middle ground" between figurative and non-figurative painting, and explored his role in the Southern California art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. The museum also published an exhibit catalog of the same name.[3]
Roger Kuntz died in 1975 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after a three-year battle with cancer; he was 49.[4]