Grace (Gay) Betts

Potter, oil on canvas, Pueblo Indian Potter Gay Betts, American Indian

Deer Dance, painting by Tonita Pena, Santa Fe, Cochiti, Pueblo, male, female Tonita Peña (born 1893 in San Ildefonso, died 1949 in Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico) was born as Quah Ah (meaning white coral beads) but also used the name Tonita Vigil Peña and María Antonia Tonita Peña. Peña was a renowned Pueblo artist, specializing in pen and ink on paper embellished with watercolor. She was a well-known and influential Native American artist and art teacher of the early 1920s and 1930s. Tonita Peña was born on May 10, 1893, at San Ildefonso Pueblo, to Ascensión Vigil Peña and Natividad Peña of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. When she was 12, her mother and younger sister died, as a result of complications due to the flu. Her father was unable to care for her and she was taken to Cochití Pueblo and was brought up by her aunt Martina Vigil Montoya, a prominent Cochití Pueblo potter. Peña attended St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe. Edgar Lee Hewett, an anthropologist involved in supervising the nearby Frijoles Canyon excavations (now Bandelier National Monument) was instrumental in developing the careers of several San Ildefonso “self-taught” artists including Tonita Peña. Hewett purchased Peña's paintings for the Museum of New Mexico and supplied her with quality paint and paper. Peña began gaining more notoriety by the end of the 1910s selling an increasing amount of her work to collectors and the La Fonda Hotel. Much of this early work was done of Pueblo cultural subject matter, in a style inspired by historic Native American works, however, her use of an artist's easel and Western painting mediums gained her acceptance among her European-American contemporaries in the art world. At the age of 25, she exhibited her work at museums and galleries in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area. In the early 1920s, Tonita did not know how much her painting sold for at the Museum of New Mexico, so she wrote letters to the administrators because a local farmer was worried that she got paid too little. In the 1930s Peña was an instructor at the Santa Fe Indian School and at the Albuquerque Indian School and the only woman painter of the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Alfonso Roybal, Julian Martinez, Abel Sánchez (Oqwa Pi), Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnación Peña. As children, these artists attended San Ildefonso day school which was part of the institution of the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to indoctrinate and assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society. In 1931, Tonita Peña exhibited at the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts which was presented at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City. Works from this exhibition were shown at the 1932 Venice Biennial. That year is the only time Native American artists have shown in the official United States pavilion at that biennial, and Tonita Peña's paintings were part of that exhibition.[1 Her painting Basket Dance, that had shown in the Venice Biennial was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for $225. This was the highest price paid up to this time for a Pueblo painting...

Corn Kachina, by Riley Sunrise, Quoyavema, Hopi, Kachina, Dancer, painting Artist Signature - Riley Sunrise (1914-2006) Quoyavema “Another of the earlier Hopi artists, Riley Sunrise (Quoyavema) worked with Fred Kabotie and Waldo Mootzka in illustrating John Louw Nelson’s Rhythm for Rain. He is also known as Quoyavema or Kwayeshva, according to Nelson. His paintings are comparable to Fred Kabotie’s, with some of them showing more action and most of them revealing less detail. Sunrise is represented in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, Gilcrease Institute (Tulsa), and the Southwest Museum. The Museum of the American Indian in New York has an extensive collection of his paintings of native Hopi dances.” (Clara Lee Tanner: Southwest Indian...

Two Kachinas painting by Dan Namingha, Katsina, Hopi, large, canvas, original

Shime, by Ruth Frerichs, Navajo, women, child, lithograph, limited edition Black and white lithograph by Ruth Frerichs Ruth Concord Frerichs was born in White Plains, New York, ear...

Jimmy Abeita B. 1947 painting is oil on canvas Image 9x12 Overall with frame 15x18 inches Signed lower right Housed in original Frame Gallery labels: Adobe Gallery and Brandywine gal...

Deboah Hiatt, born in 1953 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, died in 2013 in Scottsdale, Arizona, was a renown painter of Southwest and Pueblo Indian imagery. She frequently visited Pueblos and Cliff dwellings, finding a continuing source of inspiration in living history of ceremonial dances, powwows, and traditional way of life. Her paintings celebrated Native-American society with profound sense of serenity and spirituality conveyed through respectful interpretation of the subject and careful, thoughtful choices of colors. Hiatt majored in the visual arts and art history at Moore College of Arts in Philadelphia; she was a member of Arizona Artists Guild, Arizona Watercolor Association, and associate member of American Watercolor Society. She painted in many mediums, including acrylic and oil on canvas, watercolor, and mixed media. The painting measures 48in by 36in by 1.5in. It is signed by the artist in lower left corner "Deborah Hiatt...

Vladan Stiha: 1908-1992. Well listed New Mexico artist with auction records over $12,000. He was born in Yugoslavia and tried to emigrate to the U.S. duri...

Cynthia Wiggins Austin Artist Image Size: 14 x 11 Frame Size: 19 x 16 Medium: Oil "Native"