Publisher's Synopsis
Józef Bakos casually once remarked that ""painting is a little like flirting- you never know how it's going to turn out."" This seemingly offhanded statement characterized his lifelong love affair with art, nature and beauty. It began in his native Buffalo, New York, and continued for more than half a century in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his adopted city.
In the process Bakos contributed to the formation of one of the most important regional art traditions focused in the southwestern part of the United States. As a professional artist and teacher in Santa Fe- a 300 hundred-year-old town with a colorful mixture of Indian, Hispanic and Anglo cultures- Bakos played a crucial role in the life and growth of the town's art colony in its formative years, largely coinciding with the decades between World War I and II. This role particularly manifested itself in his founding-member status in 1921 in Los Cinco Pintores (Spanish for ""The Five Painters), the town's first modernist art group. In 1923 he was also a charter member of The New Mexico Painters, a group combining the more progressive talents from the neighboring Santa Fe and Taos art colonies.
In the late 1920's Bakos had begun working in watercolor, which later became an important part of his creative output. Around 1927 he started with tightly painted scenes of New Mexico that evolved into masterfully rendered nature vignettes of that state and neighboring Colorado.
