Stephen Kaltenbach

Kaltenbach's staggering, psychedelic portrait of his dying father is a transcendent meditation on life, afterlife and symbiosis with the universe

For much of the 1970s, the artist Stephen Kaltenbach (born 1940) developed a monumental painting called Portrait of My Father inside a rented Northern California barn where he lived without plumbing or insulation. Sustained by a formidable love for his father, experience with psychedelics and a blooming spiritual life, it took him nearly seven years to finish. Since 2001, the work has held pride of place at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. This book-length study is the definitive history of a painting that is mind-boggling from across the room--as a larger-than-life depiction of a man on death's door--and from up close, as each trippy beard whisker explodes a window onto eternity. It consists of an epic interview with the artist conducted and annotated with context, corrections, images and observations by curator and writer Jordan Stein, who also offers an introduction, alongside a trove of newly discovered archival material.