Wolfgang Pogzeba

Exclusively For The Red Man’s West

Size:  9″ x 12″, Framed:  18″ x 20″

This piece is no longer available.

Wolfgang Pogzeba was an abstract realist painter, sculptor, printmaker, and photographer of the West. He was born in Munich, Germany in 1936, and tragically died in an airplane crash near Taos, New Mexico with his family in 1982.

He was born in Bavaria and was the son of an art restorer. The family moved to the United States in 1948, eventually settling in Denver in 1950. He studied engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, then architecture and art at the University of Colorado graduating with a B.A. in Fine Arts and a Master’s degree in Education. He also attended the University of Mexico in Mexico City, the Kunstakademie in Munich and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

In 1958, he exhibited in Paris, while a student, and when he graduated in 1960 he was given a one-man show at the Montana Historical Society in Helena, Montana. He also exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas in 1963. After a short try at teaching, he began painting, sculpting, and photographing full time, eventually moving to Taos, New Mexico.

While in Taos, he led the restoration of The Church of San Francisco de Asis in Rancho de Taos in 1977, which is considered one of the most beautiful edifices in New Mexico. His residence in Arroyo Seco, North of Taos, which was later converted to an inn, has buttresses which emulate those at the Church.

Pogzeba’s works, which are relatively rare because of his death at a young age, are included in numerous private, corporate and museum collections including the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado; the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; and the Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska.

A book entitled “Wolfgang Pogzeba, New Vision”, representing his photography of the West was published in 1977. “Rancho de Taos, San Francisco de Asis Church”, a collection of his photographs made during the restoration at the Church, was published in 1981.

Sources include:
Various articles that are on the internet plus information that is in the archives of the New Mexico Art Museum’s – i.e. newspaper clippings, notes dictated by Wolfgang about his life, etc.

By Jim Baker