Many artists dream about a Bohemian lifestyle of world travel working with prodigious artists, producing art, and exhibiting art. Gloria Seneres lived the dream. At an young age, having lost her mother, Seneres met artist Ella Jackson, Seneres’ art teacher at the Girls Commercial High School in Brooklyn, who became an influential mentor encouraging Seneres to continue her art studies. With that encouragement and family support, in 1944 Seneres applied for and was accepted into New York’s Cooper Union Art School. She majored in Fine Arts and graduated with honors four years later. She then traveled to Mexico to study Mexican History and Spanish. Already greatly influenced by Cubism, Seneres decided to move to Paris and study at the atelier of French Analytic Cubist Fernand Léger. Her studies in France were followed by a migration across England, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy.

Seneres returned to America and accepted a position as assistant Art Director to McFadden Publication.  In 1950 she met and married John Seneres, who, after marrying and divorcing him twice, remained a lifetime friend.  Seneres earned a Bachelor of Science in Art Education from New York University and was accepted into their MFA Program. She moved back to Mexico and had her first of several one-person exhibitions, and began a tour with her work to Japan, England, France and Italy.  After her European tour, she moved to Nairobi, Africa with her family. In Africa Seneres continued to create art, taught art in a Kenya high school, worked on the African Wildlife Foundation Magazine, and continued to show her work.

In 1976, Seneres returned to the United States to begin building a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Although the opening of the “Seneres on Sixth” art gallery in New York’s Lower East Side briefly interrupted the building project, Seneres says that she “came back to my home in the Santa Cruz Mountains satisfied that I had seen a bit of the world.” The Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center was honored to highlight a rich legacy of art and the life of Gloria Seneres in the 2004 Invitational Exhibition, “Gloria Seneres: A Retrospect.”