Letter to President Taft is a striking and rare example of Llyn Foulkes’ “Bloody Head” portrait series, which was first exhibited at Davis Stuart Galleries in Los Angeles, in 1974, and is seen as the most iconic and visceral group of work within Foulkes’ oeuvre. This series of paintings marked the artist’s turn to portraiture as well as political subject matter, with Foulkes focusing a Francis Bacon-like intensity on disfiguring the countenances of iconic and anonymous personages alike. Letter to President Taft is one of only four works by Foulkles to portray a modern American president, giving it a particularly charged and exclusive significance. In addition to Taft, the artist turned his eye on Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. A later work by the artist, titled Mr. President, 2006, also depicts George Washington with eyes and nose obscured by the face of Mickey Mouse.

Foulkes’ career is thoroughly intertwined with Los Angeles and the southern California art scene that blossomed in the 1960s and 70s. Foulkes moved to Los Angeles in 1957 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, where he studied along with artists Joe Goode, Larry Bell and Ed Ruscha, and was taught by Emerson Woelffer. Foulkes later showed at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, first in a group exhibition in 1959, and later with his first solo exhibition in 1961. Shortly thereafter, his first solo museum exhibition was held at the Pasadena Museum of Art, in 1962. Since then, Foulkes has been included in many important group exhibitions, including Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 1992, and his first retrospective, which was held in 1995 at the Laguna Art Museum and traveled to Cincinnati, Oakland, and Palm Springs. Recently, Foulkes was the subject of another comprehensive retrospective at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2013, which traveled to the New Museum, New York, and Museum Kurhaus Kleve.

"He is one of the most significant and influential artists of his generation. He has been there for every significant moment in LA art history since the early '60s," (A. Subotnick, "Llyn Foulkes," Art Ltd. Magazine, March 2013, p. 4).