Joseph Bakos

Who was Joseph Bakos?

Jozef Bakos was an American painter of Polish origin, mainly of western landscapes.

Was one of Los Cinco Pintores who worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bakos studied art with John E. Thompson at the Albright Art Institute in Buffalo, New York. He later followed Thompson to Colorado and taught at the University of Boulder. In 1920 during a break from teaching, Bakos visited Walter Mruk, a childhood friend and artist who was living in Santa Fe. During his stay he exhibited some paintings together with Mruk at the Museum of Fine Arts. The next year he moved to Santa Fe permanently and formed an artists' group called "Los Cinco Pintores" with Mruk, Fremont Ellis, Willard Nash and Will Shuster. Los Cinco Pintores was Santa Fe's first Modernist art group and produced works that depicted specifically American subjects such as the New Mexico landscape, local adobe architecture and Native American ceremonial dances