Roger Kuntz (1926-1975)

Roger Kuntz was a man both deeply observant of and active in the physical world around him. He loved playing music, fishing, swimming in the ocean, tennis, sports cars and motorcyles and aeronautics. (He came from a family of pilots). The joy he found in the physical world in all its temporality is manifest in his paintings, drawings and sculpture. At a time when abstract expression was at its height and the Bay Area figurative painters were just returning to realism, he felt strongly that the abstract should emerge from the specific and concrete, and that the painter must communicate with the viewer. There was a profound dichotomy in his form senses between simplicity and complexity, evident in the massive harmonies of light and shadow on his blimps and freeways, and in his fascination with the calligraphic power of signs and letters or the colorful and active patterns in his landscapes and interiors.