Untitled by Zola Zaugg, Oil on Linen on Board
Artist Biography
Zola Zaugg was born in 1890 in Mexico Missouri. She had, from an early age, an interest in art, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Hardin College Conservatory.
In 1916 she married Frederick Zaugg, a dentist, and they moved to Colorado Springs shortly thereafter. They were accepted into the society of Colorado Springs in which the arts were admired.
The Colorado Springs Art Guild was born in the 1940s and Zola joined the local art scene as it grew and developed, showing her art for the first time at the Hacienda room at the Antlers Hotel. She told Gazette art critic Tom Reaney that after hanging her paintings, she went home depressed. His observation of this was that “she showed a humility and honesty that will push her to greater accomplishments”. Her landscapes “seem to be handled with a freedom and sureness but leave enough to be wondered about, and create a desire to look again and see something new.” At a later one-person show at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Zola expressed her inner belief about her art by quoting a favorite line of Walt Whitman: “to sing what belongs to you and none else.” She was best known for portraits, landscapes and familiar scenes of local landmarks including much painted Pikes Peak, Cheyenne Mountain and the Garden of the Gods.
With the growth of the abstract in art, she made her feelings known by asserting that the artist should maintain “some semblance to known objects that a connection of some thought may be established between observer and artist.”
As her reputation grew she exhibited her art beyond Colorado Springs in Denver as well as in her hometown of Mexico, Missouri. Zola Zaugg passed away in 1983.
