Robert Henri

Painter and master teacher. A member of The Eight, he led a crusade away from traditional academic painting and sought to link art with life, not theories. A whole generation of younger artists, including George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Edward Hopper, Morgan Rusell and Rockwell Kent, were inspired by Henri’s teachings.

Despite conventional art training, Cincinnati-born Henri became a famous crusader against academic conservatism. After study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he enrolled at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Henri spent the summer of 1916 in Santa Fe. So captivated was he by Pueblo Indians and their artistic products that he persuaded Sloan, Bellows, and a number of other painters to visit Santa Fe in the years that followed, thus inaugurating the colony’s most productive era.