Keith Crown

Abstract painter Keith Crown was best known for his watercolors of southwest landscapes and seascapes. He experimented applying color with brushes, razors, water cans, spray bottle, string, nails, and an air brush. He was born in Keokuk, Iowa in 1918 and grew up in Gary Indiana. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1936 to 1940, when he served int he Army during World War II as a field artist and correspondent in the Pacific Theater. He returned to Chicago after the war to finish his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1946. Later that year he moved to Los Angeles, California to teach painting and Drawing at the University of Southern California. During his drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, he visited Taos, New Mexico for the first time and was inspired by the landscape of the area. When he took his sabbatical in 1956, he returned to Taos for four months. He often returned to Taos after that, building a house in Talpa, near Taos, in 1975. He retired from teaching in 1983 and moved to Columbia, Missouri where he died in 2010. Today his work is the collections of the University of Southern California, the Phillips Collection, and the Museum of Art and Archaeology at Missouri University.