Joseph Kleitsch

Joseph Kleitsch (Sânmihaiu Român, 1882 – Santa Ana, California, 1931) was a portrait and plein air painter of German ethnicity, born in the Banat region of Austria-Hungary, now Romania. He holds a prominent place in the early California School of Impressionism, a movement that made the light and landscape of the American West its central subject.

He began painting at the age of seven and went on to train in Budapest, Munich and Paris. He emigrated to the United States in 1912, and two years later he married Edna Gregatis of Chicago, with whom he had his only child, Eugene.

Shaped by his visits to European museums, he kept his commitment to portraiture and figure painting after settling in California, where he had to meet the challenge of its brilliant light and varied scenery. In 1920 he moved to Laguna Beach, the artists' colony where he became a significant figure. His work from those years depicts the eucalyptus-lined streets, the surf of the Pacific coast and the nearby Mission San Juan Capistrano.

In 1922 the Los Angeles Times critic Arthur Millier described him as a born colorist. He died of a heart attack in 1931 in front of the courthouse in Santa Ana, aged forty-nine. Two years later his widow opened the Joseph Kleitsch Fine Arts Gallery in Laguna Beach, which keeps his legacy alive.