Karl Knaths (October 21, 1891 – March 9, 1971) was an American artist whose personal approach to the Cubist aesthetic led him to create paintings that, while abstract, contained readily identifiable subjects.

She encouraged his interest and, upon his graduation in 1910, both convinced his uncle to release him from apprenticeship and introduced him to Dudley Crafts Watson of the Milwaukee Art Institute.

[16] When the Players arrived in Provincetown, Massachusetts for a performance of Gale's Mr. Pitt Knaths recognized it as a place where he could successfully practice his vocation.

After two years of military service Knaths spent a short time studying art in New York City and then, in 1919, moved to Provincetown, which became his principal residence for the rest of his life.

[11][12][19][22][25][26][27] In the early twentieth century Provincetown was a prosperous fishing town which attracted artists and theater people from New York's Greenwich Village as summer residents.

In 1914 the sisters began spending the warm months of the year in Provincetown and, through contact with European expatriates who settled there during World War I, Agnes learned to employ Modernist and particularly Cubist techniques in her work.

[28][30][31][32][33] Knaths's earliest work has the strong lines, blocks of muted colors, and juxtaposition of rectangular and curvilinear forms which characterize his mature style.

It evolved, he said, as he "learned to move slowly from color relations, to line sequence, to better spacing, proportions, to a thematic play of shapes.

"[25] During the 1920s he had studied, and sometimes translated from German, theoretical publications of theorists and artists, including Carl Einstein, Wilhelm Ostwald, Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jay Hambidge.

[2][11][25][35][36][37] While these books deal mainly with color, proportion, and Bauhaus design theory, Knaths was also interested in the relationship between music and painting and in this, it is likely his wife, Helen, who was a conservatory-trained musician and whose piano playing he enjoyed almost daily, was an influence.

[15] Another wrote that Knaths's paintings are personal expressions of both theory and feeling which arise from his love of nature, his close bond with his community, and a "poetic meditation on human life.

[40] Knaths himself wrote on this subject: "Systems are only bricks and lumber — of themselves they cannot encompass the immeasurable spiritual qualities that go into a successful picture.

[41] A painting from Knaths's mature period, Pumpkin, shows his integration of the abstract Cubist idiom with a representational tabletop still life.

Strong calligraphic lines demarcate planes of both bright and muted colors and the composition can be viewed as both two- and three-dimensional: either blocks of color juxtaposed in rectangular and curvilinear shapes or a foreground still-life grouping — a table holding bottle, glass, pieces of fruit, and pumpkin — within an abstract enclosed space with what appear to be windows or panels on a rear wall.

The background at left bears similarity to a wall in the artist's studio shown in a photo of 1961[42] and this suggests that the windows or panels at right might be paintings.

It can also be seen, for example, in a painting of 1936 called Composition showing two men seated at a table with a coffee pot and mugs, a woman standing with broom in hand, and a cat lying on the floor of a sparsely-furnished room.

[28][46] The winter months were cold and their house so drafty that, even though Knaths disliked city life, they spent much of that season in New York.

In 1924 Helen and Agnes bought land on which Knaths constructed a house and studio using materials from nearby derelict buildings.

[25][28][37] He recognized that he needed to establish connections with dealers and exhibitors if he wished to find buyers for his art and, together with Agnes, he used his time in New York as well as trips to Boston and Washington, D.C. to do just that.

[47] In 1926 Knaths's work appeared in another show, the Société Anonyme exhibition, held in Brooklyn,[2] and, that same year, the collector, Duncan Phillips bought his Geranium in Night Window of 1922.

During the next few years Phillips would write appreciative articles about Knaths's work and, in 1929, would devote a room in his Washington, D.C. gallery to their display.

Rising early, he would paint during the morning hours and, during the afternoon would study, listen to music, do chores, and wander his beloved Cape Cod environs.

Calling themselves The Irascibles, a group of abstract expressionists wrote a protest complaining that the jury was hostile to the "advanced art" that they produced.

[64] The signatories were the most prominent members of what would come to be called the New York School, men such as Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning.

One critic said Knaths did not then aim to break new ground but rather to "define the guiding limits within which modern painting must proceed in order to reach it.

Barnett Newman, one of the men who signed the 1950 protest letter, felt that it was like the work of Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko in having an intensity of feeling and emotional impact.

"[68] There remained an excellent market for Knaths's paintings during the remainder of his life and, at his death, the works left in his estate commanded relatively high prices.

[22] A voracious reader, he liked to translate German writings on theories of music, colors, and painting and would ask friends to help him make the English plain.

In an interview when he was 62 a reporter described him as "apple cheeked"[25] and another wrote that at age 72 he was "an impressively tall, broad, sturdy man ... with a smooth ruddy face and a steady smile.

Described as shy, sensitive, and somewhat retiring, he was also said to be modest and charming — a man whose bearing conveyed gravity and whose approach to life and art was passionate.