Wolfgang Pogzeba

At the age of fourteen, Wolfgang Pogzeba came with his family to the United States from Germany and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado. He received a bachelor's degree in art history from the University of Colorado in 1960 and received a master's degree in education in 1962. He also studied at the Colorado School of Mines, the University of Mexico in Mexico City, the Kunstakademie in Munich, and the Sorbonne in Paris. His professional career as an artist was launched with a one-man show at the Historical Society Museum of Montana in 1960, and he continued to show in one-man and group exhibitions in both galleries and museums across the country.

As a modern artist, Pogzeba worked across several media, including sculpture, painting, photography, and architecture, and thematically focused his early work on the West. His images are somewhat abstract yet retain recognizable forms. Pogzeba's sculptural work, which is a combination of the traditional western and the unconventional modern, is aesthetic rather than documentary. Distorting the figures to create a powerful drama, Pogzeba simplified forms by abstracting the surfaces into broad planes. Also, the artist cast his own sculptures, reworked the surfaces, and applied many layers of patina to each work. In the early 1970s, Pogzeba moved away from western subjects to experiment with new subjects and media. Because of the artist's death at an early age, his work is relatively rare but is included in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections, such as the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, and the Great Plains Art Museum.