George Klauba - An Artist's Journey George Klauba was born in 1938 on Chicago's southwest side to parents of Lithuanian descent. His father, a machinist by trade, moonlighted as a stage magician. His mother introduced him to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History, places that influenced him more than traditional schooling. He also loved Classics Comics. It was a Classic Comic that became enamored of Moby-Dick. Melville quickly became his hero. |
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In 1956, just short of his eighteenth birthday, he enlisted in the Navy, following in the footsteps of his uncle, a sailor. Upon completing boot camp, he requested assignment to a destroyer, and, for three years, served on the Kenneth D. Bailey, out of New Port, R.I. He was with the Atlantic Fleet, including two deployments to the "Med" as Sixth Fleet and Cuba as a Gunners Mate/Seaman. |
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After being discharged, he pursued a commercial art career at Chicago's American Academy of Art. He married Mary Basso and, within a few years, their daughter Gina was born. Twenty-seven years of being a graphic designer at the Chicago Sun-times left him disillusioned with commercial art, and he turned to the Fine Arts. Recalling experiences of that almost universal rite among sailors of tattooing, he began to incorporate naval and tattoo imagery into woodcuts and drawings. He says, "I had come to believe that what a person wore on their skin usually gave insight to what was in their soul. Tattoos were, for me, art for the common man, noble in its self-expressive, decorative, and symbolic impulses." I began incorporating tattoos into sculptures and constructions that were influenced by oceanic motifs. Mary Basso Klauba died in 1995. |
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He continued working as a fine artist, concentrating on painting. In 2006, he and Judith Burson Lloyd were married at the Seamen's Bethel in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a fine artist, he is self-taught and has been represented by Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, for many years. His work has been exhibited widely and is in many collections.
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