William Thomas Lumpkins
(1909 - 2000)
William Thomas Lumpkins was born in 1909 on the Rabbit Ears Ranch, located near the Texas and Oklahoma borders in the northeast corner of Territorial New Mexico, and just a few miles south of the Old Santa Fe Trail, which connected Missouri to Santa Fe in the 19th century.
After living on cattle ranches in Arizona and New Mexico, he attended high school in Roswell New Mexico, where he met artist Peter Hurd in 1927 at age 18. Hurd encouraged his artistic leanings and critiqued his work. Lumpkins later studied art at the University of New Mexico, and architecture at the University of Southern California.
A childhood tutor introduced him to Zen Buddhism, which made a lasting impact on his life and artwork. Lumpkins started exhibiting his paintings in 1932, most of which were watercolors. He was one of the earlier Abstract Expressionists, having employed the style about a decade before other American artists popularized it. He met artist Raymond Jonson in Santa Fe in 1935, while buying supplies in an art supply store that Jonson ran from his garage. This was during the Great Depression and art supplies were hard to find. They became close friends and later formed the Transcendental Painting Group along with Emil Bisttram and other area artists.
The outbreak of war in 1939 interrupted their work and Lumpkins was commisioned as a U.S. Navy flight instructor in 1941. Bill had learned how to fly in the 1930's after buying a crop duster with a friend. He became Chief of Flight Operations at the naval base in Memphis, Tennessee, where he served as Lieutenant Commander until 1946.
After World War II, Lumpkins moved to San Diego, California, where he worked as an artist and architect for fifteen years. He had a studio that overlooked the Pacific Ocean on the very site where the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art exists today. In 1962, he married Norma Pruneau, and together with two small children returned to Santa Fe in 1967, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Throughout his adult life, Lumpkins had a unique style that was quintessential "New Mexican". He always wore a broad brimmed Stetson hat, Mexican style cowboy boots, and a neck scarf. He drank sparingly, but when he did he only sipped tequila.
Lumpkins was also a pioneer of passive solar architecture, and designed many of his buildings in a way that would absorb heat from the sun and radiate it back inside the building. His adobe architecture was featured in the 1982 exhibit Des Architecture de Terre at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 1985 Lumpkins co-founded the Santa Fe Art Institute with Pony Ault. His work has been exhibited at commercial art galleries, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1939 New York World's Fair, and the New Mexico Museum of Art.
Books
- Adobe Past and Present, by William Lumpkins, 1974.
- Casa Del Sol: Your Guide to Passive Solar House Designs, by William Lumpkins, 1981.
- La Casa Adobe, by William Lumpkins, 1986.
- William Lumpkins: Pioneer Abstract Expressionist, by Walt Wiggins, 1990.
- New Mexico Style: A Sourcebook of Traditional Architectural Details, by Nancy Hunter Warren and William Lumpkins, 1995.
- Pueblo Architecture and Modern Adobes: The Residential Designs of William Lumpkins, by Joseph Traugott and William Lumpkins, 1998.
