Calabi Gallery

Featuring an Eclectic Array of Primarily 20th Century Artwork

Katharine Skeele Dann

Broken HomesBroken Homes by Katharine Skeele Dann, 1959, Watercolor, 22 x 30

Taos Indian by Katharine Skeele Dann, Mixed Media, 11 x 8

Anna Katharine Skeele was born on July 12, 1896 in Wellington, Ohio. She began her art studies at Olivet College in Michigan. In 1912 Dann moved to southern California, where she continued at Pomona College. During the 1920s she furthered her studies at the California School of Fine Arts, in Monterey with Armin Hansen, and at the Art Students League in New York under Hawthorne and Bridgman. While in Europe, she attended Académie de la Grande Chaumière and André Lhote in Paris, and Royal Academy of Arts in Florence.

After returning to the United States, she taught art at the Monrovia High School for many years, and often spent summers among the Native Americans of Taos. In 1946 she married artist Frode Dann, and together in 1951 they established the Pasadena School of Fine Arts, where she taught drawing and painting from 1952-59. Dann died on June 28, 1963 in Pasadena. She was a member of the California Watercolor Society, and known best for her mural and landscape painting, most particularly Indian genre-pueblos.

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