Louis King Stone
(1902-1984)
Louis King Stone was born in Findiay, Ohio in 1902. He received formal art training at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 1919 - 1920, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts during 1926, and the Art Student League in New York from 1926 — 1927, where he studied under Boardman Robinson and Thomas Hart Benton. Stone spent five years in Europe after his marriage in 1927. While in Europe he continued his training, studying under Hans Hofmann and André L’hote. He returned to the United States in 1933 and spent brief periods of time living in Woodstock, NY and Jacksonville, Florida. While in Florida, Stone co-founded the Stone-Morris School of Fine Arts in Jacksonville with James S. Morris. In 1935, Stone settled in Lambertville, New Jersey, an active intellectual and artistic community. He became a leading member of the Independents, a modernist artist’s collective that struggled to gain recognition for abstract art. Stone also helped to establish the Cooperative Painting Project which held visual “jam sessions,” where three artists worked together on a single painting. The products of the session where signed with the combined name “Ramstonev”. Stone exhibited in the New York Worlds Fair in New York City in 1939. He also exhibited regularly in galleries throughout New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. He worked for the WPA easel project from 1935 — 1938, during which time he painted canvases for murals in public buildings throughout the United States. Stone continued to paint and throughout his life. He died in Lambertville in 1984.
