Bisbee, Arizona

 

Gene Kloss

  1903 - 1996 (biography)

1925  

etching 

8 7/8 x 6 7/8" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

not editioned, proofs only - RARE 

titled in pencil, lower left 

Sanchez/Kloss 67; illustrated: volume 1, page 46 

antique-white laid 

i/i 

artist 

20311 

SOLD

A 1925 etching by Kloss of a street in Bisbee, Arizona. The dome of the Pythian Castle is in the background. There is no known edition of this etching. Annie Larkin, Curator at the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum speculates: "Looking at the positioning of the Pythian Castle in the image, it appears to be from Review Alley, which connects to Brewery Gulch. The buildings that are shown in this image have been gone for decades. The part of the image that threw me off a bit was the footbridge. I had not remembered seeing it in an image. I looked at one of my 1910s photos under magnification and spotted the footbridge, as well as a tree growing behind it. The drawing is looking down the Alley looking south." Gene and Phil Kloss traveled to the Southwest on their "wedding trip" in May of 1925. Kloss comments in a letter to Robert White in 1994: "We set out in a Chevrolet touring car with close-down top, fabric tires carrying equipment, clothes, etching press weighing 60 pounds, oil and watercolor materials, easel, the load covered by a heavy oiled canvas." Kloss did 40 etchings on this trip in 1925, only one (Desert Rhythm) was editioned at 25. She did one more Southwest image on this return trip to California, an etching, "Catalina Mountains, Tucson," done in early 1926.