W.P. (Pete) Jennerjahn

Milwaukee-born artist and World War II veteran, W.P. “Pete” Jennerjahn (1922-2020) came to Black Mountain College at the insistence of his wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Schmitt Jennerjahn. Betty had previously attended BMC’s 1944 Summer Art Institute and raved about its “exhilarating aura.”

Pete studied under Josef Albers, became his assistant, and later took over teaching his courses in color and design following Albers’ departure from BMC in 1949. From 1949 to 1951, the Jennerjahns founded the Light Sound Movement Workshop, in which they developed short theater pieces using projected slides, painted backdrops, music, dance, and verbal texts, aiming to create a non-verbal, structural relationship of light, sound, and movement. 

After leaving BMC in 1951, Pete spent a year in Paris. Upon returning to the US, he settled in New York, where he taught at Cooper Union and Hunter College and from 1954 until 1987 at Adelphi University in New York. He worked in a variety of artistic mediums, but was primarily a painter.