Rita Deanin Abbey
Art Museum

By appointment only –

Open Thur-Sun


Taos Series

4 on display, 12 in series

Painting of Taos mountain landscape with shades of blacks, grays, tans, and some magenta to make the landscape pop. Mountain figures are formed using controlled, black lines. In the center of the piece are some shapes Rita later nicknamed, "Walking Landscape." It is two thin, cyan lines forming a triangle, a magenta cross, and another magenta two-lined triangle. The painting looks as though the brushstrokes are moving with a wind.

The Taos Series serves as a complement to the Arches National Monument Series.

Enamored with the landscapes of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, Abbey honed her expressions of color into a palette of cooler tones for this series of works.

Series Highlights

White background with a thick, black line through the right side of the painting with a thinner line coming out of it to the bottom left. In the middle of the painting, there is a red line that swoops and curves on the left side. In the red line's curve are tan circles in a row and yellow lines. One circle is on the right side of the thick line and appears gray like a mirror.
Rita Deanin Abbey, Winter Composition, 1959
An oil painting done by Rita Deanin Abbey of a mountain landscape in Taos, New Mexico. The top is a white and blue sky that mixes with a blue round mountain, cut up by white triangular shapes forming mountains. The middle is a mix of thin lines of yellow, purple, pink, and blue. The bottom is a swirl of circles and cloud-like shapes forming what appears to be trees before they root in the dark blue and white floor.
Rita Deanin Abbey, Taos Mountain, 1960