I am so pleased to let you know that I have debuted my website devoted to late artist Karl Priebe: www.karlpriebe.com. Priebe was invariably described by art critics as a fantasist. The strange moods and odd juxtapositions of people, animals and objects in his paintings bring his art into alignment with the surrealism of Salvador Dali, the neo-romanticism of Christian Berard, the magic realism of Frida Kahlo and the metaphysical painting of Giorgio De Chirico. All of those labels are at least partly applicable to Priebe and similarly describe the works of the artists he was close with, aesthetically, geographically and personally, and with whom he formed a small but compelling circle of Midwest artists working in the marvelous mode. Priebe and his fellow fantasists, including Gertrude Abercrombie, John Wilde and Sylvia Fein were kindred eccentric spirits, bohemians, and habitués of the Jazz scenes in Chicago and Milwaukee. Priebe (whose ancestry was German) had numerous African-American friends, students, and intimates who appear in his paintings, transformed by fantastic guise, amusing themselves in improbable settings: “as if touched by a magic wand, humans, animals and landscapes alike are whisked off to his own fairyland, a carefree world of gaiety and charm” declared the catalogue of Priebe’s 1946 show at James Vivegno Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1947 the headline of a Life magazine article about Priebe declared “Young Midwest artist lives and paints in an odd world of fantasy.” I invite you to discover the world of Karl Priebe.