George Krause

George Krause studied at The University of the Arts. Employment is recorded with University of Houston. Work by George Krause is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Harry Ransom Center and Photography Collection. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and Rome Prize.

Krause was born in 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the 1950s, he studied painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography at the Philadelphia College of Art (PCA; now a part of the University of the Arts).

While serving in the US Army between 1957 and 1959, he turned his full attention to photography, spending all his free time documenting the culture of the black neighborhoods in the racially segregated communities of South Carolina. Krause later moved in a less documentary direction, seeking images that were more ambiguous and open to viewer interpretation with projects dealing with cemetery monuments, religious statuary, and an atypical series of nudes. In the volume George Krause: a Retrospective published in 1991 in conjunction with a major mid-career exhibition, Anne Wilkes Tucker, the curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, observed: "Krause explores intensely personal themes rooted in basic human concerns: sensuality, mortality, and mystery....His work is perpetually relevant because his issues are basic and vital to the human condition. Few viewers leave his exhibitions unmoved—be it by indignation, horror, pathos, or wonder." Krause lives and works in Wimberley, Texas.

• Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to Spain in 1963 • Commission from Citizens’ Council on City Planning and the Philadelphia Foundation in 1966 • Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 • Philadelphia College of Art Alumni Award in 1970 • National Endowment for the Arts in 1973 • Bicentennial Commission, Philadelphia in 1975 • First Prix de Rome in Photography Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976-77 • Photographer in Residence, American Academy in Rome National Endowment for the Arts in 1979-80 • Unicolor Grant in 1983 • National Endowment for the Arts, Filmmaking in 1985 • Cultural Arts Council of Houston in 1986 • Texas Artist of the Year in 1993 • Tylee Cottage Residency, Whanganui, New Zealand in 1997 • Artist in Residence at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2007

George Krause is recorded as having received Guggenheim Fellowship and Rome Prize.