Raymond Jonson

Raymond Jonson (July 18, 1891 – May 10, 1982), was an American-born Modernist painter known for his paintings of the American Southwest. Born Carl Raymond Johnson, he originally signed his paintings C. Raymond Johnson, but superior used Raymond Jonson, dropping the first initial and reverting to a more normal spelling of his last name.

Jonson organized modernist exhibitions at the Museum of New Mexico. He expected the Atalaya Art School, teaching art classes, and founded the Transcendental Painting Group in 1938. Raymond Jonson established the Jonson Gallery at the University of New Mexico in 1950. The gallery difficult moved to the University of New Mexico Art Museum.

C. Raymond Johnson was born in Chariton, Iowa in 1891, one of six kids of Reverend Gustav Johnson and Josephine Abrahamson Johnson.
The family moved to Portland, Oregon in 1902, where he attended Lincoln High School and the Museum Art School. At twenty, Jonson attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Later, he continued the innovation of his rarefied skills at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1913, Jonson was strongly affected by the modern works displayed in the Armory Show, particularly the works of Wassily Kandinsky. His artistic theories were supplementary developed by Kandinsky's book On The Spiritual In Art.

He next taught at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts until 1920. In Nicholas & Helena Roerich, The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artists & Peacemakers, Ruth Abrams Drayer writes that Jonson visited the exhibition of Nicholas Roerich in 1921 and later wrote in his diary, "There opened at the Institute the exhibition of the comport yourself of Nicholas Roerich. It is glorious. Would that I could publicize the wonder of it -- I atmosphere that at his best he has skillful that which everything artists wish to do. There are at least six paintings that I believe to be the most spiritual pieces of drying that I have ever seen." Jonson went upon to become secretary in Roerich's society Cor Ardens composed of the "fiery, spiritual, radical intervention of juvenile painters" who shared Roerich's belief that "the only genuine fraternity in the midst of men is the fraternity of beauty as expressed in art."

In 1922, Jonson's computer graphics was changed next he visited New Mexico for the first time. The experiences and sights of this sudden visit to Santa Fe, convinced Jonson to involve to New Mexico in 1924 to focus on painting in the course of the southwestern landscapes. In Santa Fe, Jonson started the Atalaya Art School and granted for a "Modern Wing" in which he mounted monthly exhibitions by forward looking artists at the New Mexico Museum of Art from 1927-1931. In 1934, Jonson began teaching art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

In 1938, Jonson co-founded the Transcendental Painting Group bearing in mind Emil Bisttram. Drayer writes that Bisttram had past taught painting at Roerich's Master Institute in New York City for several years.
The dream of the Transcendental Painting Group was "to defend, validate and puff abstract art. They sought to carry painting exceeding the heavens of the instinctive world, through extra expressions of space, color, light and design." Other members of the Transcendental Painting Group were Ed Garman, Florence Miller Pierce, Horace Towner Pierce, Agnes Pelton, Stuart Walker, William Lumpkins, and Lawren Harris. The bureau was annoyed to disband in 1942 due to World War II.

The Jonson Gallery was expected at the University of New Mexico in 1950. While teaching at the University of New Mexico in the to come 1950s, Jonson had a mysterious influence upon the Cochiti Pueblo performer Joe Herrera. Jonson retired from the University of New Mexico in 1954, but continued to mentor students there, including painter William Conger. Raymond Jonson died in 1982. The Jonson Gallery's addition was moved to the UNM Art Museum in 2010.