"Model posing" Oil on canvas Signed lower left: Kuntz, titled on the stretcher 40" H x 30" W Notes: Roger Kuntz's background as a realism painter, paired with his found love of abstract expressionism created a springboard for artistic experimentation. He strived to find new ways to portray shape and texture and to convey traditional subject matter in innovative ways. Of his process, Susan M. Anderson of the Laguna Art Museum explains: "Kuntz's work of the late 1950s and early 1960s quintessentially embodied the experimentation, fragmentation, and paradox in American culture of the time." Kuntz spent many years painting urban California scenes, creating abstraction out of iconic cityscapes and portraying the solitude and industrialization of the built environment. Winning the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grant for painting allowed Kuntz to take a leave of absence from teaching at Scripps Colleague to focus on his artwork. Parallel to his cityscapes, he painted domestic scenes of his living room or bathtubs; both subjects ultimately inspired Kuntz to create series of works. Later in Kuntz's' life, he returned to painting figuratively. The present example, Model Posing, shows the artist's academically trained life drawing skills. He employs a triangular composition often utilized in the history of art and features a bold and unabashed female sitter with a laissez-faire expression. In many of Kuntz's figurative works, he blurs the face to emphasize color and form, however in this instance, the visage is uniquely highlighted.