Pueblo Indian Painting Collection (Montezuma mounting into the heavens on his eagle)

Creator

Richard Martinez

Creator Biography

PORTFOLIO COLLECTION:

Jamake Highwater (introductory essay author)

Dr. Hartley Burr Alexander (introductory essay author, 1932 edition)

Land O'Sun Printers, Scottsdale, Arizona (printers)

Roswell Bookbinding, Phoenix Arizona (portfolio cases)

Bell Editions, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1979 publisher)

C. Szwedzicki, Rue de France, France (1932 publisher)

COVER ART (Montezuma mounting into the heavens on his eagle):

Richard Martinez, San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1904–1987 (artist)

Preview

Creation Date

1932 (reproduction), 1979 (facsimile of reproduction)

Geography

America

Culture

Native American, San Ildefonso Pueblo

Medium

Six-color offset lithography on Rising Art Print paper

Dimensions

20 × 15 15/16 in. (50.8 × 40.48 cm)

Credit Line

Purchase by the Department of Art History, 2025

Accession Number

2025.113.0

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

50 Reproductions of Watercolor Paintings by Indian Artists of the New Mexican Pueblos of San Ildefonso and Sia

Description

This portfolio is a collection of 50 reproduction prints of paintings by Julian Martinez, Encarnacion Peña, Abel Sanchez, Romando Vigil, Louis Gonzales, Richard Martinez, Awa Tsireh, Miguel Martinez, and Velino Herrera. All nine artists included in this collection are members of the San Ildefonso and Zia Tribes. This folio is a 1979 facsimile of the original 1932 edition. 750 numbered and signed copies of the 1979 edition were produced. This copy is number 110 of 750, and is signed by Jamake Highwater. The collection is accompanied by two introductory essays: “Rediscovering America Through Indian Art Part II: The Pueblo Renaissance” by Jamake Highwater and “Introduction to the 1932 Edition” by Hartley Burr Alexander.

According to Alexander’s essay, the collection, with the exception of three paintings by Velino Herrera, “was brought together by Miss Anne Evans of Denver (1871–1941)” (19). Anne Evans donated her collection of Native American and Spanish Colonial folk art to the Denver Art Museum. Evans was the daughter of John Evans (1814 –1897), a territorial governor of Colorado who was forced to resign for his role in the Sand Creek Massacre, which resulted in the death of hundreds of Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne) and Inunaina (Arapaho) people.

In 1929, Dr. Oscar B. Jacobson, the head of the art department of the University of Oklahoma, commissioned the French printer C. Szwedzicki to reproduce a folio of thirty paintings called Kiowa Indian Art, based on exhibitions he curated in Denver and Prague. In 1932, Jacobson commissioned this folio, Pueblo Indian Painting. Highwater’s essay notes that “the fifty color plates of the [1932]  folio were produced with the utmost care and taste, the plates hand colored on a photomechanical key, in an edition limited to no more than 500 copies” (10).

Individual Digital Kenyon entries for the prints within this collection can be found at the following links:

(2025.113.1-2025.113.50)

Male figures in the costume of the Hunter in the Buffalo Dance

Female figure in the costume of the Buffalo Dance, carrying Sun Disc

Procession of female figures representing women in the costume of the Basket Dance

Male and female figures from the Buffalo Dance

Highly conventionalized figures of type participants in the great Corn Dance

Prepresentation of the Basket Dance in its tableau moment

Highly conventionalized grouse or turkey associated with plant forms designed from cloud and rain emblems

Turkey associated with maize plants and rain-cloud designs

Bird-forms associated with a plant-form composed of cloud and rain-emblems

Deer, with mountain terrace below and cloud emblem above Turkey with maize

Deer (buck and doe) under cloud crescents and rain pendants

Warrior mounted on pinto pony, with cloud-form for sky, earth-center token below, vegetation forms composed of rain-baskets and stylized flowers

Galloping deer

Emblem of the Universe

Costume and action of the Deer dancer, in the winter Hunter's Dance, commonly known as the Deer Dance

Representation of the Big Horn, or Rocky Mountain Sheep, in the Deer Dance, with conventional decoration of rain and cloud forms

Representation of the Big Horn

Representation of the Buck in the Deer Dance

Ceremonial clowns, generally known under the the Keres Name Koshare

Symbol of the sun rising above the rain cloud, with skunks below

Female dancer in costume of the Butterfly Dance

Female dancer in costume of the Sun Dance

The great Corn Dance, showing choir and male and female dancers

Montezuma summoning the animals from their caverns

Highly conventionalized Avanyu, or Plumed Serpent, after the manner of the vase-painters

Circle of women dancers in Harvest Festival

The Snake Dance, with alter, as celebrated in the Hopi villages of Arizona

Gigantesque figure from the Shalako Dance of the Pueblo of Zuñi

The great winter Hunters' or Deer Dance of the Rio Grande Pueblos, with representations of the Hunter, the Bison, the bearer of the Sun Disc, the Deer, the Prong-Horn Antelope

The Buffalo Dance group

Landscape showing deer with tree and rainy sky

Landscape showing bear in the mountains

Buffalo Hunt

Hunter's Dance, with rainy sky

Montezuma summoning the animals, showing deer, bison, antelope and Montezuma's own auxiliary, the eagle

The Eagle Dance, in which two dancers mime the soaring flight of eagles

Skunks surmounted by sky crescent with cloud terraces and by the symbol of the sun

Bear with body of a deer, surmounted by sky symbols

Antelope surmounted by sky symbols

Turkey, with mountain and cloud terraces and sun symbol Hawk

Snake Dance performer, wearing the kilt adorned with the emblem of the Feathered Snake

Symbolic bird made of cloud and rain signs with the head of an eagle surmounted by cloud terrace

"Thunder-bird" holding the Avanyu

Highly conventionalized macaw

The sun-disk rising from the body of the Avanyu shown with bird attributes

Figures in the Buffalo dance

Warrior on a pinto pony

Antelopes running under rainy skies with the signs of the sun, the birds and implements of the chase