Christ in a Red Robe

The works of western American artist, Minerva Teichert, have received increasingly popular and critical acclaim in recent years. Today, the LDS community loves Teichert. She is a woman who successfully combined both faith and family and left an extraordinary legacy of artistic production.

Minerva Kohlhepp was born in North Ogden, but grew up homestead farming in the vicinity of American Falls, Idaho. Her father encouraged her childhood sketching. Soon, she developed an “indomitable will to succeed and excel in the field of art.” She taught school to raise enough money to go to Chicago for her art studies.

She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League of New York in the early 1900s. There, mural paintings and theatrical pageants were dynamic components of American popular culture. Teichert embraced these art forms. Following the admonition of her art teacher – the American realist painter Robert Henri – she used the visual language these murals provided to tell the narrative of her religious heritage as well as that of the American West.