Bettina Steinke (1913 - 1999), Charcoal and Pastel, 14î x 10î, Framed: 23.5" x 19.25"

A painter of portraits, especially Indian subjects, Bettina Steinke worked as an illustrator in New York and married photographer Don Blair, and they often worked together with her as the artist-illustrator, and he, the documentary photographer. They traveled to Central and South America, the Arctic and Alaska where she did portraits of the natives.
At age 24, she earned acclaim for portraits of maestro Arturo Toscanini and all 108 members of the NBC orchestra. In 1949, she and her husband moved West to Taos, New Mexico, and in 1955 settled in Santa Fe.
Bettina was not only a gifted artist, but a teacher, and confidante to many others of the 1960s Taos group, a gaggle of very young, enthusiastic and wild painters and sculptors including Ned Jacob, Bill Sharer, Buffalo Kaplinski, George Carlson, Jon Zahourek, and others. Bettina taught young artists to deepen their abilities to see color, form, texture, highlights, essence. She was one of the last of her kind. Her husband Don Blair opened Blair Galleries at The Compound in Santa Fe on Canyon Road in the 1960s and sold her incredibly skillful work, and all the 1960s Taos Groups' paintings and sculptures.