AMALIA SCHULTHESS

       
 
The entire life of Amalia Schulthess has been tied up in art. She grew up in Thurgau, Switzerland, where Paul Klee was a frequent guest in her house. She immigrated to America in 1941. Upon her arrival in New York she made contact with Piet Mondrian, who inspired her to continue working as a professional artist. Schulthess then travelled west, painting and exhibiting for the next 20 years in California and New Mexico. In Taos she met Andrew Dasburg and was instrumental in reviving the career of the great modernist who had fallen into obscurity after the war.

By the late 1960s Schulthess had abandoned painting for sculpture. She worked in Florence, Italy for 10 years and after that established a studio in Pietra Santa. Regardless of where she was her work has always been close to nature. Organic forms predominate and the magic of the raw material is allowed to speak out.

Schulthess was the subject of a retrospective at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1976 and has exhibited in Paris at the Salon de Jeune Sculpture and the Salon de Mais. Her work is in various public and private collections both in Europe and America including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, La Jolla Art Centre, and the Long Beach Museum of Art.