Kim Wiggins
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Selected Sold Works
Kim Wiggins Biography
Kim Douglas Wiggins grew up on a ranch in southern New Mexico. At the age of twelve, an art dealer visiting his parent’s ranch discovered his budding talent and began marketing his work in Scottsdale, Arizona. By the mid 1970’s, he was painting in oil and working as a graphic artist for a national equine magazine. During the 1980’s he experimented with various forms of Impressionism and Modernism eventually leading to his distinctive style. Today, Wiggins is recognized as one of the creative forerunners behind the current Modern West Movement. His uniquely modern vision of the West often places his work alongside celebrated icons of Western Realism as a powerfully, contrasting voice of creative vision.
Wiggins has exhibited for the past twenty years at the Autry Museum’s Masters of the American West. He has also exhibited with the Briscoe Western Art Museum; Booth Western Art Museum; Denver Art Museum; National Museum of Wildlife Art; C. M. Russell Museum; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Museum of New Mexico; De Young Museum; National Society of American Impressionists and the Other Side of the West.
Wiggins has been honored with numerous awards and accolades. In 1995 Wiggins was one of a handful of young artists included in a groundbreaking major show in entitled, American Realism & Figurative Painting. Wiggins exhibited along side the legendary masters of American Art including the renowned Andrew Wyeth, Georgia O'Keeffe and Elaine de Kooning, from New York. His work was included in the Painters and the American West exhibition in 2000. This pivotal and historic event emerged in conjunction with a major book by Yale University Press on the history of the art of the American West. The show opened at the Denver Art Museum and then traveled the country to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Art Institute of Chicago. Every American master from George Catlin to C. M. Russell and Ernest Blumenschein to Georgia O'Keeffe was included in the exhibition. Wiggins complex work, Merging Cultures on the Santa Fe Plaza, was voted People's Choice at the exhibition in Denver with over 40,000 visitors. In 2005 his monumental work, Lewis & Clark Among the Mandan, 84 x 108 inches, was purchased by Jackie Autry at the Masters of the American West and added to the permanent collection of the Autry Museum. In 2007 he fulfilled a lifetime dream when he was honored with a one-man show in New York City. Wiggins traveled to the city documenting the iconic metropolis in a mammoth series of 40 cityscapes for a cutting-edge show with Altermann/Modern of New York. In 2014 Wiggins received the Heritage Award from the New Mexico Historical Society recognizing his passionate innovation and contribution in the arts. Recently Wiggins was one of a handful of contemporary artists recognized in the recent National Geographic book, The Old West. In 2018, The Briscoe Western Art Museum, honored Wiggins with the William B. Travis Award for Patrons' Choice for his historical powerhouse, The Texians, Oil, 30 x 40. The same night this painting broke the auction record for his work when it sold in San Antonio, not far from the legendary Alamo.
The Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles houses two of Wiggins' major works. Other collections include the Briscoe Western Art Museum, Museum of New Mexico, American Museum of Western Art, The Anschutz Collection, Booth Western Art Museum, Phippen Museum, Roswell Museum & Art Center and Tulane University. The Staples Center in Los Angeles houses a collection of 10 major historical works focused on the history of California. This collection has been used as the backdrop for many backstage interviews including the Grammy Awards. Wiggins work has appeared or dawned the cover of such publications as Western Art Collector, Southwest Art, Art of the West, Architectural Digest, American Psychologist, Cowboy & Indians, Wildlife Art, Western Art & Architecture, International Artist and Elle Decor.