American Art Collaborative

Painter. Winslow Homer encouraged young Kroll to make a career of art. Born in New York, he first enrolled at the Art Students League, then continued his training at the National Academy of Design and with Jean-Paul Laurens in Paris. Although he exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show, Kroll's style was more strongly informed by his association with the Henri circle. Indeed, it was the presence of Robert Henri and George Bellows in Santa Fe that brought Kroll to New Mexico in the summer of 1917. During his brief stay, Kroll rendered the colorful southwestern scene with the same delight in plastic form that he brought to his better-known New York figure paintings and portraits.

References
Hale, Nancy, and Freson Bowers. Leon Kroll: A Spoken Memoir. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the University of Virginia Art Museum, 1983.

Bernard Danenberg Galleries. Leon Kroll: The Rediscovered Years. New York: Bernard Danenberg Galleries, 1970.

Charles Eldredge, Julie Schimmel, and William H. Truettner Art in New Mexico, 1900–1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1986