Karl Knaths was an American artist whose personal approach to the Cubist aesthetic led him to create paintings which, while abstract, contained readily identifiable subjects.
Background
Karl Knaths was born on October 21, 1891 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, United States. His parents were Otto Julius Knaths and Maria Theresa Knaths. Shortly after Knaths's birth the family moved to Portage, Wisconsin where he spent his childhood years.
When Karl was in his late teens, his father died, and he became apprenticed to his uncle, George F. Dietrich in the baking trade.
Knaths had a sister, Olga, who was born on December 9, 1893, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and who died on January 18, 1981, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Education
Karl Knaths attended Portage High School and graduated in 1910. During the next year Knaths studied art at the Milwaukee Art Institute.
In 1911 Knaths began studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Knaths received Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from Chicago Art Institute in 1951.
Knaths began working while studying at the Institute. He obtained the job by which he supported himself when he was introduced to Laura Sherry, the director of the Wisconsin Players. Despite his youth and inexperience, Sherry took him on as caretaker of the playhouse and one of its set designers.
In 1913 Knaths worked at the Armory Show as one of the guards. In 1917 he rejoined the Wisconsin Players as the group's scenery painter during a tour of East Coast theaters. When the Players arrived in Provincetown, Massachusetts for a performance of "Gale's Mr. Pitt" Knaths recognized it as a place where he could successfully practice his vocation.
After two years' military service Knaths spent a short time in New York City and then, in 1919, moved to Provincetown, which became his principal residence for the rest of his life. On or soon after his arrival he met two sisters, Helen and Agnes Weinrich of the Provincetown Printers. After their first meeting Agnes helped Knaths to develop his personal style of painting and over time they developed a close and mutually beneficial working relationship.
Knaths's earliest work had the strong lines, blocks of muted colors, and juxtaposition of rectangular and curvilinear forms which characterize his mature style. Knaths's paintings from his mature period were "Horse Barns" and "Pumpkin".
In the early years of Knaths and Helen's marriage, Knaths brought in little money through odd jobs and the occasional sale of a painting. During that time he recognized that he needed to establish connections with dealers and exhibitors if he wished to find buyers for his art and, together with Agnes, he used his time in New York as well as trips to Boston and Washington, D.C. to do just that. In 1921 he exhibited paintings at New York's Society of Independent Artists for the first of many occasions.
In 1926 Knaths's work appeared in another show, the Société Anonyme exhibition, held in Brooklyn, and, that same year, the collector, Duncan Phillips bought his "Geranium in Night Window" of 1922.
In 1930 Charles Daniel became Knaths's first art dealer. In 1931 Knaths left Daniel for the Downtown Gallery and soon after he moved to the J.B. Neumann Gallery. In 1945 he moved to the gallery of Paul Rosenberg & Co., which then continued to show and sell his work during the remainder of his life.
Between 1938 and 1950 Knaths gave lectures during the winter session of the Phillips Gallery Art School. From 1943 to 1945 he taught art courses at Bennington College. He also he lectured at Black Mountain College in 1944 at the Skowhegan School of Painting in 1948.
Knaths died on March 9, 1971, in Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts, after a brief illness.
Achievements
Karl Knaths was the recipient of the numerous awards and prizes. In 1950 his painting "Basket Bouquet" won first prize in the Metropolitan Museum "American Painting Today" competition. This prize cemented his reputation as one of America's leading modernists.
Knaths was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and National Academy of Design.
National Institute of Arts and Letters
1955
National Academy of Design
1968
Personality
Knaths was raised in households where German was commonly spoken and himself spoke with a slight German accent. A voracious reader, he liked to translate German writings on theories of music, colors, and painting and would ask friends to help him make the English plain.
He was industrious and regular in his work habits. Described as shy, sensitive, and somewhat retiring, he was also said to be modest and charming - a man whose bearing conveyed gravity and whose approach to life and art was passionate. He read philosophy and classical literature as well as writings on art, music, and color theory and he loved to listen to classical music, particularly the works his wife would play on the piano.
Physical Characteristics:
Photos of Knaths show him to have been a large man, tall and broad. When in 1910 he went to Milwaukee to study, he was, according to one description, "an angular, open-faced boy". His World War I registration card says he had dark hair and blue eyes. People who knew him wrote that he was tall and fit, strong and gentle. Balding in middle life, he wore a beret most of the time. In an interview when he was 62 a reporter described him as "apple cheeked" and another wrote that at age 72 he was "an impressively tall, broad, sturdy man ... with a smooth ruddy face and a steady smile".
Interests
reading
Music & Bands
classical music
Connections
In 1922 Knaths married Helen Weinrich, the sister of an American painter Agnes Weinrich. He was then 30, Helen 45, and Agnes 46. Agnes remained a member of the Knaths's household the rest of her life.
Knaths and his wife Helen had no children. From the time of Knaths's marriage to Helen and their decision to live together with her sister Agnes, the three formed a bond that survived during the rest of their lives.
Father:
Otto Julius Knaths
Knaths's father, Otto Julius, was born on October 10, 1846, in Wettin, Germany. An orphan, he attended the Latin School in Halle and emigrated to the United States from Leipzig in 1869. He earned his living as a baker.
Otto Julius died in 1908.
Mother:
Maria Theresa Knaths
Her birth date is not known. She died in 1932.
Spouse:
Helen Weinrich
Helen's birth name was Lena. She changed it to Helen after 1905 when she and her sister Agnes returned from travels in Europe. She was born in 1876 on a farm in Des Moines County in south east Iowa and died at age 102 in 1978 while living in Provincetown.
Uncle:
George F. Dietrich
Sister:
Olga Knaths
Knaths had a sister, Olga, who was born December 9, 1893, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and who died January 18, 1981, in Madison, Wisconsin.
