Page 62 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL FALL 2021 DISCOVERING SANTA FE

MatthewsGallery
The gallery exhibits American and
European traditional, modernist art work
and from the ��th, ��th and ��st
centuries.
https://www.thematthewsgallery.com/

This brings us to Los Cinco Pintores. — a row of small adobes on Canyon Road. Except
One artist influenced by pioneer Santa Fe for Bakos, who had some carpentry experience,
artists was 22-year-old Fremont Ellis. He they had no building skills. The story goes that
moved to Santa Fe in 1919 where he made Shuster and Ellis were building the adobe walls of
friends with four other newly arrived artists, their homes when Shuster noticed that Ellis’ wall
Josef Bakos, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash, and was leaning precariously. He ran to help, only to
Will Shuster. They called themselves the Los turn around as his wall crumbled into a pile of
Cinco Pintores or The Five Painters. The five - adobe bricks. Amused locals called the young
all in their 20s - loved the artistic freedom and artists “five little nuts in five mud huts.”
energy of Santa Fe. They were fun-loving nuts who loved to spend
The five amigos decide to build their own homes evenings together at each other’s adobes. It’s said

62 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE FALL 2021