A 100-piece puzzle of Andrew Dasburg's "Taos Houses", 1926, oil on canvas painting. Artwork courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Dasburg was born in Paris but moved to the United States when he was five. His training began at the Art Students League with Kenyon Cox and Birge Harrison; it continued with Robert Henri and numerous visits to the circle of Gertrude Stein in Paris. His early work, which was included in the Armory Show of 1913, was inspired by contemporary European artists, particularly Cézanne, Matisse, and the Futurists. In 1918, encouraged by Mabel Dodge (Luhan) and Maurice Sterne, he spent a summer in Taos. From then on he returned either to Taos or to Santa Fe for part of each year, becoming one of the first modernists to form an attachment to the region. He also became an avid collector of and dealer in Hispanic and Indian crafts. In 1933 he settled permanently in New Mexico, continuing to employ a modified form of Cubism to find structure and meaning in the landscape.