John Koenig (1927-2017) was born in New Mexico in 1927. He spent most of his time painting Taos, New Mexico from 1978-1997 before moving to Asheville, North Carolina. He studied painting and illustration in New York City at the Morgan School of Advertising and the Art Students League and sculpture with Jack Pappasion. He also studied at the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy and at the Academia de Barcelona in Spain. Outside of his painting, Koenig was a producer and director his own motion picture company, Lumiere Films.

Koenig is known both for his oil paintings and his wax encaustic paintings. His work has won many awards and prizes and is found in private collections both in this country and Europe. His work has been exhibited in New York in the National Arts Club, the National Academy of Design, Allied Artists of America Show, Salmagundi Club and the Fulton Gallery. He has also exhibited work at the Philadelphia Art Museum, at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the Farnsworth Museum and Wiscasset Museum in Maine, and The Taos Galleries in Taos, New Mexico and Scottsdale, Arizona.

“The soul of my subject matter, its vital essence, remains forever my obsession in painting . . . if that can be captured, then the work comes alive, fraught with its own note, its own music. Without that spark, that living radiance, the painting remains a dead thing.”