Raymond Jonson Web Portal

Introduction

Raymond Jonson was a remarkably innovative American painter whose career spanned eight decades of the twentieth century. Moving from an academically trained figurative style and early career in stage design to increasingly abstract and non-objective subjects, his exacting experiments in color, texture, and media set him apart as an important contributor to modernism. His contributions as an educator and lecturer add significantly to this artistic legacy. Jonson’s involvement in influential movements such as the Transcendental Painting Group and interactions with other notable modernist painters makes him an intriguing and relatively untapped subject for research. Through the archival resources in this portal and in the UNMAM collection, we hope researchers will be drawn to investigate Jonson’s contributions, and his work will reach a new audience.

The University of New Mexico Art Museum houses more than 600 paintings by Jonson from his personally curated Retrospective Collection, formerly part of the Jonson Gallery. Through the presentation of historical information about the artist’s life and artistic development, along with archival materials, images, technical notes, and sketches, this site provides a portal into the artistic life of an important modernist painter with strong ties to the university.

_{Paintings within the Raymond Jonson Web Portal were bequests of the artist.}