John-Franklin Koenig

John-Franklin Koenig (1924 — 2008) was an American artist who, though born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and sometimes associated with the 'Northwest School' of artists, spent most of his career in France. He was primarily a painter and collagist, working in a modern, non-representational style. His work appeared in hundreds of exhibitions around the world. He died in Seattle in 2008.

Early life, education, World War II service

Koenig was born Oct. 24th, 1924, in Seattle, to parents of Swiss-German and French Huguenot extraction. He attended Lincoln High School. Interested in art from a young age, he was particularly taken with Asian art he saw at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1943, while studying at the University of Washington, he was drafted by the U.S. Army and trained as a tank crewman. Landing at Cherbourg with the 11th Armored Division in 1944, he immediately fell in love with France and French culture. A few weeks later he received shrapnel wounds to the head and back in the Battle of the Bulge. While awaiting transfer back to the U.S. after the war's end, he took art classes at a G.I. University in Biarritz. There he made his first paintings.

Koenig returned to the University of Washington, where he studied art, French, and French literature. Around this time he also became interested in the work of Northwest artists such as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. In 1948 he acquired a degree in Romance languages

In 1986, Koenig received the Gold Medal of the City of Paris and was later made a Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters. In 1989, the Paris Arts Center held a retrospective of his work. His paintings and collages have been shown in nearly 150 solo exhibitions around the world and are part of collections in a number of international museums, including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Paris); the National Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of Western Art (Tokyo); the Musée des Beaux-Arts and Musée d'Art Contemporain (Montreal); the Musée de l'État (Luxembourg); and the Seattle Art Museum.