Color Study

Ingeborg Lauterstein spent her youth in Austria fleeing the Nazis. After time as a student at a well-known art school in Glasgow, Scotland, she emigrated to the United States to study at Black Mountain College in 1948. One of her instructors was Josef Albers, whose influence can easily be seen in her few extant paintings. This color study was produced as part of a classroom assignment. However, her most powerful influence at BMC was Charles Olson, a modernist poet.

After getting married, Lauterstein moved to the Northeast to pursue her career as a writer, but she held her experiences from Black Mountain in high regard. Recalling the beauty of Lake Eden and the magic of the mountain flora and fauna, she described BMC as one of the “safest” communities she had ever known—not for a lack of creative risk, but for the haven it provided to those fleeing the political turmoil of Europe.