Howard Schleeter was born in Buffalo, New York in 1903. He was the son of a commercial artist, and briefly studied at the Albright Art School. After serving time in the US Army during WWII he found his way to New Mexico in 1929. He would spend the rest of his life there living in Albuquerque from 1930 to 1970, with brief periods of living in Santa Fe (1958-1968) and Placitas (1970-1976).

During the 1930s when most NM artists were focused on creating traditional landscape and genre paintings, Schleeter developed his signature modern art style of painting using heavy impasto to highlight his brushstrokes and modernist techniques. This style of paint application was as dynamic as his artistic visions. His landscape paintings created with this technique have a uniqueness not found in most art of the time. His dynamic scenes of the NM environment with modernist compositions set him apart from other NM artists of the time.

Schleeter studied under Brook Willis, another local New Mexico artist, and strengthened his style of painting through the use of oil, scratchboard, engraving, watercolor, gouache and multi-media works. By the late 1940s, he was fully engaged with abstraction and primitive motifs.

In 1936 Schleeter received several commissions and worked as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration. Five realistic murals representing the West are at the Melrose Public School library in Southeast, New Mexico. The New Deal offered further commissions in Santa Fe and Clayton, New Mexico, and Washington D.C.  from 1936 – 1942.

Schleeter would work on 3 – 4 paintings at a time, painting quickly and in a fully absorbed state. He painted primarily in abstraction with his interest spanning everything. Karen Clark (NMPBS Colores interview) stated “…everything he saw, he considered art…he would paint and turn (it) into something special…he could paint anything, and he did.”

He and his wife Ruthie, lived a very frugal life. They lived in a tent on a pallet, raised above the ground to avoid snakes and scorpions. He supported himself solely with the sales of his paintings: His dentist and doctor amassed fine collections of his work. If he could exchange a painting for something, he would. Schleeter said, “…if people let me alone and let me paint, I’ll be happy.” He was not a self-promotor, but a lifetime of artworks earned him acclaim. His success kept pace with his enormous output.

Further financial stability came from teaching at a Las Vegas, New Mexico, art gallery from 1938 – 1939, and in 1950, 1951, and 1954 was a professor at the University of New Mexico and was a member of the Art League of New Mexico. In 1954 he was the only artist invited from the Southwest to the prestigious Guggenheim’s Younger American Painters show. Schleeter was called “an artist’s artist by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1945 and acknowledged by Peter Hurd and Jane Mabry for his substantial contributions to New Mexico’s art.

Above everything else, he cared about his art…so much so that even when he suffered from Parkinson’s, he did not give up and learned to paint left-handed, he even painted with his teeth until he died in 1976. He paid his funeral expenses with a painting…He loved art, it was his life.

Schleeter once said, “Some people paint their brushes out, others paint their hearts out.”

Sources:  Younger American Painters: A Selection 1954 | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

http://www.masterpieceonline.com/bio.php?artistId=1065&id=1C96-CDAH-6E59&name=Howard%20Schleeter, accessed July 17, 2012.

Czar, Web. “Howard Schleeter, Antsy Mcclain, George Rodrigue, Gary Kandziora.” ¡COLORES!, 1 June 2020, www.newmexicopbs.org/productions/colores/august-15-2015/

Younger American painters : a selection, [Exhibition] May 12 to July 25, 1954 : Sweeney, James Johnson : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive